I finally decided on a cloud storage provider

[UsandThem]

After debating it for most of a year, and trying out Backblaze for a few months when they had a deal on Humble Bundle, I went with Google Drive. The two that I was debating between were Google and Amazon, but I liked how Google let me organize everything, and their Google Drive back & sync program uploaded everything faster than AWS was able to. Both were pretty easy to use right away, without having to dig through multiple settings.

The thing that shocked me the most though, is the PC resources that are committed when you sync your files using their respective desktop programs (both Amazon and Google). I have a i7-6700k, and it eats a solid 20% - 50% (cores and hyper-threading) of my CPU cycles, and took all of my free RAM (almost 12GB), and put it all into standby while slowly adding it to committed portion as needed. I don't think I've run any programs up to this point that did that.

I've always kept local backups of my data, but I really needed a place off-site where it could be stored in case of theft, fire, flood, or some other natural disaster. $19.99 for 100GB wasn't as cheap as AWS ($12), but was worth it for me to finally make my decision.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Just curious, what did you not like about Backblaze? I'm going to try that out.

 

[UsandThem]

Just curious, what did you not like about Backblaze? I'm going to try that out.

Unless they changed their sync program, there is no control of what it backed up. It backed up everything, so it backed up stuff that I didn't need backed up, which caused the initial upload to take something like 3-4 days. With Amazon and Google, I can select what I wanted backed up, and the initial upload was only a few hours.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

AFAIK you can select folders to exclude so it's not too bad...

 

[UsandThem]

AFAIK you can select folders to exclude so it's not too bad...

It could be now. I last used them about a year ago, or thereabouts.

I used their cloud backup service, and their program had no options on selecting which folders or files you wanted. There was an option to exclude some folders or files, however. Now they offer a cloud storage option (B2), which from what I understand a user can choose what they want to be transferred.