Backing up in The Cloud

Question

Thought I'd share my experiences to date of using these marvellous Infinity upload speeds (16Mbps in my case) to do stuff that in practice was pretty well impossible before. For example, doing major backups into The Cloud - more than a DVD's worth, 5GB+.
First I had to find a cloud drive that would store these amounts of data for free, well Dropbox was out as it won't, so I tried GoogleDrive and MS SkyDrive. I haven't tried Amazon yet - all three will take 5GB of data (7GB for SkyDrive).
First I tried GoogleDrive as it appears to support the largest individual file sizes but i was disappointed with the upload speeds, just over 3Mbps at best. I didn't try file splitting and concurrent uploads, but I did for SkyDrive - read on.
Next was SkyDrive, I was hoping for faster upload speeds but no, they were slower - about 2.5Mbps per upload, this was even more disappointing. So I decided to compress all my files into a multi-part zip file, using 7-zip (which is free). Maximum file size on SkyDrive is 300MB using the web interface, so I ended up with 15 zip file parts.
And finally, some good news. SkyDrive has a simple drag and drop web interface and will allow three concurrent uploads per browser tab. Each upload gets the full 2.5Mbps so that makes 7Mbps. Logging on to the SkyDrive account on two additional tabs, with three more files uploading per tab, lets you max out a 16Mbps connection. It worked like a dream and I now have 5GB of stuff backed up in the cloud. Tonight, I will replace it by an encyrpted version.
So in practice, you really can use your full upload speed for secure (hopefully) permanent backup in the cloud.
But I won't be touching Microsoft's (or anyone else's) synchronization software anytime soon - there are too many potential problems that could arise from that. Accidental deletions of everything, for example - SkyDrive has no recycle bin. Thanks MS and Google but no thanks! Other people with different needs will want the synchronization of course, horses for courses, but the point is that fibre makes backing up into the cloud a practical proposition even for large data amounts, but you do have to work at it to use your full upload speeds.

Answer 1

deathaxe wrote:
I would still say for a few gigabytes use a DVD-R or a memory stick as the legal implications of the cloud still haven't been thrashed out.
Look at all the legitimate users of megaupload who still cannot get at their data and the FBI still hasn't worked out if or how they will let those users get to that data.
For me I have 2 x 2TB drives in caddies as backup and they live in a fire safe only coming out when they are needed. 
I should have said, yes I do that as well but if my PC, backup HDDs and my house or even me were to disappear suddenly, people (some overseas) would almost certainly still have access to the data, at least until they could download it.  MS won't know what's in the encrypted multipart zip files anyway (non-commercial websites).
Posting hard drives or even SD cards overseas every week (or day!) isn't exactly like a walk in the park or free - using the Cloud is - finally (using multiple accounts as needed). And I'm a lazy so and so so click-click-done suits me down to the ground. And gives me one extra layer of data redundancy (if that's the right word).
Having another backup option is always nice, though it's disappointing that you have to set up multiple concurrent uploads to use all the Infinity speed.