I got a hand-me-down Amazon Fire tablet (2015, 5th gen) from a few years ago...what can it do that CANNOT be done on a desktop/laptop?

[Tulpa | 3,490]

7 minutes ago, Estil said:

I'd rather have the old fashioned kind of back ups (SD cards, plug in drives, etc).

What SD cards have 10TB?

And you'd have to be diligent with it, whereas you can set up cloud based storage to back up automatically.

[chromableedstudios | 24]

You can use a tablet on an airplane when they make that announcement about putting away large electronics

[Estil | 1,264]

17 hours ago, Tulpa said:

What SD cards have 10TB?

And you'd have to be diligent with it, whereas you can set up cloud based storage to back up automatically.

No no no no no no no, I just mean the hard drive (the main primary storage space) should be significantly bigger than my current one (currently 2TB...a new desktop that I think would actually be somewhat worth the upgrade should have at least 4TB and at least 8GB RAM (my current rig has only 4GB).  The SD cards/flash drives would be the backups (like diskettes or CD/DVD-RW's from back in the olden days) that I'd use for my most important files (which I already do).

Did I forget to mention my desktop is already at least ten years old (yes another one of my old lady's hand-me-downs)?  So it's all the more frustrating that even after all this time the new desktops seem to offer hardly any real improvement/upgrade...at least for my purposes (I obviously don't need a gaming PC, for example; unless it was a vintage Windows 3.1 or 95 based one or something).

Edited December 3, 2020 by Estil

[Estil | 1,264]

[please delete]
 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,490]

1 hour ago, Estil said:

No no no no no no no, I just mean the hard drive (the main primary storage space) should be significantly bigger than my current one (currently 2TB...a new desktop that I think would actually be somewhat worth the upgrade should have at least 4TB and at least 8GB RAM (my current rig has only 4GB). 

Are you actually in need of storage "significantly bigger" or do you just feel that you need it to get your money's worth?

In any event, the trend is towards more online storage (where it can be way bigger than 4TB, or even 10TB) and having the computer's internal storage be something like SSD to boot up faster. I have SSD in my computer and the boot time is almost instantaneous, compared to how slow disk based hard drives are.

8GB of RAM is reasonable. You can probably do 16GB, like my current machine. It wasn't expensive, either.

1 hour ago, Estil said:

The SD cards/flash drives would be the backups (like diskettes or CD/DVD-RW's from back in the olden days) that I'd use for my most important files (which I already do).

Eh, you still have to manually do it. I prefer automated backups.

[Estil | 1,264]

42 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Are you actually in need of storage "significantly bigger" or do you just feel that you need it to get your money's worth?

YES, I really do need significantly bigger...both my primary (2TB) and secondary drive (1/2 TB) of my desktop are maxed (I use the smaller 1/2 TB to additionally back up super important irreplaceable things like my collection of UK basketball games). 

I'm really not so sure about this cloud thing...I mean I wouldn't want some "other guys" having my data and possibly nosing around it or something.  Not to mention couldn't you lose it if they close down or get hacked or something?

[Tulpa | 3,490]

1 hour ago, Estil said:

YES, I really do need significantly bigger...both my primary (2TB) and secondary drive (1/2 TB) of my desktop are maxed (I use the smaller 1/2 TB to additionally back up super important irreplaceable things like my collection of UK basketball games).

Okay, a lot of video makes sense.

 

1 hour ago, Estil said:

I'm really not so sure about this cloud thing...I mean I wouldn't want some "other guys" having my data and possibly nosing around it or something.  Not to mention couldn't you lose it if they close down or get hacked or something?

A big company running it is unlikely to go down. You're much more likely to experience a hard drive failure.

They're almost never hacked, and your browsing habits online are more likely to gain attention than your random files.

https://blog.cloudhq.net/5-safety-concerns-with-cloud-data-storage-answered/

Edited December 3, 2020 by Tulpa

[Estil | 1,264]

I also forgot to mention that the vast majority of the things I back up are actually stuff you could watch/download off the Internet or watch on Amazon/YouTube/Netflix or whatever or I can download from a um, super secret website.  As well as rom/iso sets...there was a really popular rom place that had complete sets of roms (like all NES roms, all SNES roms, and so on) that, like the UK basketball games website, had the Copyright Nazis take it down  

So you could say I'm wanting and doing just the opposite of "cloud" backup...I want the backups (and the main stuff on my desktop and laptop) available offline via SD cards, plug-in drives and such just in case for whatever reason I can no longer get it off the Internet (I don't know if that kind of massive collection of UK basketball games will ever come back, for example).  Like, what if the Internet goes out or something?  Wouldn't it be nice to say, still watch your favorite shows and music videos and such on your computer without needing an Internet connection?  Yes I do have DVD sets and game cartridges/discs for a lot of them but hey, why risk 'printing/scratching the discs if you don't have to?

Edited December 4, 2020 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,490]

Does your internet go down often? I can't remember an outage lasting more than a half hour in at least five years, and even that's rare.

Not saying you don't experience it, but stable internet is why cloud computing has taken off.

The other advantages to the cloud are 1) access anywhere with a net connection, not just your house (may or may not be applicable to you, but if you do go somewhere, everything you mentioned up there is available) and 2) you get a new computer, you just reconnect to your cloud service. No lengthy transferring of data to the new computer, no risk of accidentally erasing your backups, etc.

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Tulpa

[Estil | 1,264]

8 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Does your internet go down often? I can't remember an outage lasting more than a half hour in at least five years, and even that's rare.

Not saying you don't experience it, but stable internet is why cloud computing has taken off.

Of course not...but remember there's also the possibility of things like Copyright Nazis taking it off the Internet, Amazon/Netflix/etc deciding they don't "feel like" offering a TV show or something and no longer host it, and so on.

I also make very sure to backup my game saves on spare memory cards too, and the PS3 is great for backing up your PS1/PS2 saves!

I guess with offline things like game cartridges/discs, DVDs, stuff backed up on your SD cards or plug-in drives, you never have to worry about it being "taken away" like things online sometimes happen.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,490]

18 minutes ago, Estil said:

Of course not...but remember there's also the possibility of things like Copyright Nazis taking it off the Internet, Amazon/Netflix/etc deciding they don't "feel like" offering a TV show or something and no longer host it, and so on.

With cloud storage, nothing like that will change for you. It's your personal storage, just not on anything at your house. If Netflix takes away something, you still have it through your own cloud.

 

18 minutes ago, Estil said:

I guess with offline things like game cartridges/discs, DVDs, stuff backed up on your SD cards or plug-in drives, you never have to worry about it being "taken away" like things online sometimes happen.

And failure of your home storage devices sometimes happens. A cloud storage solution has redundant backups already in place. They're big server farms that duplicate the data over and over. If one part fails, several more keep your data safe.

 

It's up to you. Cloud storage does have an ongoing cost, but the tradeoff is the advantages I've listed.

If I was going to store my stuff locally on my own in house drives, I'd want a RAID setup (similar to how cloud services back their stuff up) so that if something did fail, a backup would catch it. But then you have to rebuild it if/when it does.

Edited December 4, 2020 by Tulpa

[Estil | 1,264]

3 hours ago, Tulpa said:

If I was going to store my stuff locally on my own in house drives, I'd want a RAID setup (similar to how cloud services back their stuff up) so that if something did fail, a backup would catch it. But then you have to rebuild it if/when it does.

Hee hee I take it a RAID setup has nothing to do with the bug spray?  

On a related note, I did wonder if keeping another backup on an "offsite" location (like my grandma's) would also be a good idea?

And of course "failure of your home storage devices sometimes happens"...that's the whole point of backing up your stuff!

Edited December 4, 2020 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,490]

8 minutes ago, Estil said:

Hee hee I take it a RAID setup has nothing to do with the bug spray?

Somehow I knew you were going to say that. RAID is "redundant array of independent disks." You can actually set up your own with two hard drives (making a RAID 1 arrangement) or buying an external unit with dual hard drives or network storage that is already set up for the most part.

10 minutes ago, Estil said:

On a related note, I did wonder if keeping another backup on an "offsite" location (like my grandma's) would also be a good idea?

Sure, if you don't mind schleping to grandma's if you need to update the backup.

11 minutes ago, Estil said:

And of course "failure of your home storage devices sometimes happens"...that's the whole point of backing up your stuff!

Right, but with the cloud, you don't have to worry about backups if its automated. All that, including possible hardware failure, is covered. And you don't have to worry about going to a backup flash drive only to find that it too has failed.

[chromableedstudios | 24]

Maybe check out freeNas?

[Estil | 1,264]

8 minutes ago, chromableedstudios said:

Maybe check out freeNas?

Nahs    But seriously what is that exactly?

[chromableedstudios | 24]

Software you could run on a PC to add a bunch of hard drives and share out the data, maybe something that 'just works' out of the box like a synology nas would be better if you don't want to mess with details but want lots of storage