Do we even need local storage anymore?

[Prohibiting]

Has anyone else moved away from local harddrive storage and switched to a cloud storage platform?

I made the leap recently... pay Google £2-something each month for 200GB. I've used 90GB, the bulk being all my photos and the rest documents/files. Why do we need 256GB, or 500GB, or 1TB, even up to 2TB on a harddrive for light home users? I know there are a few exceptions for this but personally, for just a normal everyday laptop user, what's the point?

I have no music taking up loads of storage as I have a Spotify subscription. Again, no photos stored on my hard drive... nothing really. Everything gone to Google cloud. I can access anything anywhere, edit google docs anywhere etc.

I also have 1TB cloud storage in Windows OneDrive due to purchasing their basic office suite, but when that expires I'm just going to use Google Docs etc.

Even mobile phones... why do we need huge local storage on them if you have a cloud service? Who even actually puts hard music on their mobile these days?

On my Macbook I've got 198GB available out of 250GB... the only thing on here using up the storage is apps and system stuff.

Surely I'm not the only one?

Edited by Prohibiting on Saturday 2nd February 10:37

[bitchstewie]

I do too.

Too many people fall into the trap of thinking they can do things better than the likes of Google or Microsoft can.

I do fully accept that it may be not be practical if you're constrained by bandwidth or have a lot of large files to deal with, but thankfully I don't.

[crowfield]

Buy the hard drive once ( £30-40 ish these days ) and thats the end, or rent space in the internet and pay monthly for ever more. I know what is cheaper!

[JonChalk]

Currently have 117GB (our of 256) of free space on my MBP.

All my photos are in the cloud, courtesy of Amazon Prime (unlimited size and quality) and BT (1TB).

Plus locally on a NAS, together with films and music for local network streaming, plus copying into car vis SD card (rarely stream anything in the car).

[Donbot]

I need the HD space in my PC for games. Otherwise I'd be happy using cloud (if my internet was a bit quicker).

[supersport]

And when that service shuts down.......


Old school thinking, but not having a local copy of YOUR data seems slightly mad.

[JonChalk]

supersport said:

And when that service shuts down.......


Old school thinking, but not having a local copy of YOUR data seems slightly mad.

Agree - at some point I'm expecting my free cloud services to be turned into pay options or closed down, so doubling up with local NAS( or HDDs), even if rarely used, seems sensible.

[Rick101]

Dropbox for me. Not the cheapest at about £75 a year but I like how it works, I like how it integrates and am happy with the cost.
I can easily find any of my data, whether that be photos, files, recorded voice calls whatever, on any internet connected device at any time.

[bitchstewie]

It's a balancing act.

If you can be disciplined enough to keep on top of backups and multiple copies and ensuring they're stored safely etc. then fair play.

I've had too many people sheepishly asking me if I can get their life's work back from a broken computer and no backups to believe that, for most people, that isn't more of a risk than that of Google or Microsoft going out of business.

[Hub]

supersport said:

And when that service shuts down.......


Old school thinking, but not having a local copy of YOUR data seems slightly mad.

Yes. Photos are precious - to minimise risk a local back up AND cloud backup is sensible!

Plus in terms of mobiles - 4g internet is still patchy so offline music is also still a good idea, then you're never left without, and aren't using up lots of data too!

[Arklight]

I use a lot of cloud services, but have a copy of all my data stored on a NAS at home.

For me personally, local storage is also much better for media sharing and streaming for things like Plex with the volume of data i have.

[Smollet]

I've always been a belt and braces person I have a mixture of both

[jamoor]

i have a nas drive which backups to a usb disk which backs up to the cloud.

If I have anything new I just copy it to the NAS drive which does all of the rest automatically. My data is quite valuable.

[markiii]

great until you want to work and teh internet is down

[alorotom]

I have all our household photos, documents, work stuff etc... on Google photos / Drive and that’s then mirrored to a 1Tb SSD in my laptop which in turn then gets backed up weekly onto a personal remote NAS.

I have about 8TB of additional local storage for my media server which is about 2/3full of movies, TV series, music etc...

[ReallyReallyGood]

I value my privacy so turn off cloud storage on every device i use.

[GetCarter]

markiii said:

great until you want to work and teh internet is down

Or if you live in an area with 4k upload speed. (That's 4K). Many of my photos are 100mb+

[Cloudy147]

I think if you are comfortable with cloud and don't use much local storage, a Google Chromebook is worth a look. They are great and fit into this world perfectly.

Personally I couldn't do without local. I also don't want the hassle of either paid storage going up in price endlessly, or folding, or being hacked and having to move everything.

[craigjm]

I’ve got a NAS with personal cloud. Gives me the flexibility of using cloud without handing your data over to someone else.

[theaxe]

I have all my photos, home videos and documents in Google (Photos and Drive) using their Sync app. I then take a monthly download of the last months photos and copy them into Amazon S3 (Glacier, very cheap) so that I have a second copy.

Removing all of my MP3s (Spotify), home movies and photos (Google) from my laptop felt strange but it's never been a problem. Internet access is pretty ubiquitous.