Clark recommends combining different free cloud storage services. How does one do that? Also, it seems that when using more than one, you would merely be duplicating your space, not getting more. Wouldn’t you be saving the same data again in more than one place? Would that make it more difficult to retrieve data in an emergency?
A while back I remember an app for Windows where you configured all your various cloud accounts and it treated them as one big storage area. That may not have been the best idea.
Yes, you can use multiple cloud storages to store the same data, but you can also configure many of them to back up specific folders. Thus you might configure Cloud-A to store folders A-J and Cloud-B to store K-P and so on.
If you have another computer in the house you can save files to both, minimizing the case where you have a disk failure on one system, you data is duplicated on another.
Personally I have so much data that I use multiple free cloud services, multiple external disks AND pay for a backup online of about $100 a year for unlimited storage. I pick and choose what I store and where so that I don’t have to pay.
You can use a sync app like Syncthing to copy whatever you want to a family members computer somewhere else in the world. If need be, you could encrypt that data so the other end can’t see it, but just have a copy. I use that software on my cellphone to automatically copy my photos to my home computer. It does not rely on other companys like Microsoft or whomever to be an intermediate. Those services often change their services or start to hold you hostage to start paying them more, like Google did recently.
Back in the 80’s our computer company used to duplicate transaction data from one site to another. The originating system was live data and the remote site was almost live but read-only. Thus if the network went down, the remote site might have data that was hours old. In most cases, that was not a problem. When the neywork came back up, the remote site would have transactions made (very quickly) in the same order they were entered on the live system. If the live site had a failure and the remote site was up to date, they just reversed the data flow.
The sync thing I mentioned doens’t do transactions, but can copy file by file. It is also possible that you can duplicate data on multiple computers. So you can have a folder, your family in another state has the same folder on their system and another family overseas has the same folder. Files added by any of the three can be sent to the others so that everyone has the family photos or whatever you store. That program is of course free but slightly technical to set up initially. https://syncthing.net/
In my opinion, Apple is the only SAFE place for iCloud storage. First, it’s not that expensive. Second, it’s a “no brainer” because it’s automatic and never have to remember to “do it”. Third, it’s APPLE and can be trusted. One never has to wonder…“where did I store my docs”, or “where did I store my photos”. It’s all in one place and “safe”. I don’t think we need to worry about Apple going out of business in the foreseeable future. And, yes, Apple might change the way they do business, but they won’t leave you hanging without an alternative. I just don’t trust “ABC” cloud storage because they just are not well known and unpredictable. I understand wanting to save money, but at what expense and frustration with dealing in multiple locations and logins.