Are clouds an acceptable alternative to your own hard drives? - Any links to good hardware forums or pointers to external HDD enclosures with controllers that never go stand by?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2026-02-05 at 17:05 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Thu, 2026-02-05 at 14:06 +0000, Wade Smart wrote:
> > startech 3.5" external esata/usb 2.0 ide/sata enclosure
> 
> I have sent an inquiry to the manufacturer.

"Thank you for contacting StarTech.com

Unfortunately, we no longer carry USB to 3.5" drive enclosures. Our
apologies."

Indeed, I missed the "Discontinued" in the upper left corner:
https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/s351bmu33etg


OTOH they sell https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/s352bu33rer .


Change of subject

Keeping your own data accessible to yourself has probably gone out of
style.

The first three disadvantages of the cloud.

1.1 If the internet goes down, you cannot access your own data.

1.2 When I do have an internet connection, it's very slow and gets
    interrupted every few hours, and it takes up to 30 minutes before I
    can continue. Copper cable! Fiber optics are also available where I
    live, but the costs are outrageously high.

2.  If the company goes bankrupt, the data is gone.

3.  If the company owner, the police, or anyone else wants it, the data
    is gone.

I just picked the first thing that the devil's search engine spat out on
the subject of the cloud.

You don't need to understand German to understand the information
regarding GB and €:

https://www.heise.de/download/specials/Die-10-besten-Cloud-Speicher-3149052

For example:

"LIFETIME

Ultra 10 TB
1190EUR
10 TB Storage
2 TB Shared link traffic
Fair sharing
Shared link branding
30 days trash history

Encryption
150EUR
Client-side encryption
Zero-knowledge privacy
Easiest way to encrypt/decrypt"

In terms of lifetime cost, you could say that it's okay insofar as you
never have to copy data from an old hard drive to a new one. You're not
just buying the hard drive for today, but also replacement hard drives
for the future. What's more, the cloud is located elsewhere, so if
aliens abduct my apartment to Andromeda, not all archived data and
backups will be lost.

On the other hand, I can stand next to my own hard drives with the fire
extinguisher and crossbow, and I can operate them with electricity from
the hand-crank dynamo. I therefore have better control over defending
myself against the forces of nature and evil people than I do via fiber
optic or copper cable connections to a cloud that belongs to who knows
whom.

Your own hard drives are used to store your own data, similar to gold
coins that you bury in a wooden box in your garden as financial
security. You hold something in your own hands that always retains a
certain value, and risk and security are somehow balanced.

A cloud is used to store your own data, similar to a savings account
where you keep money as financial security.
This is convenient and offers a certain degree of security, but you
don't have anything in your own hands. In fact, just like money, data is
subject to inflation. Even a company like Apple was once virtually
bankrupt. Does anyone remember Atari? It's a false sense of security.
The data is in the hands of speculators who could go bankrupt at any
time.

If someone cuts the copper cable, you can't get your data back with a
crossbow. But with a crossbow in your hand, no one will touch your hard
drives.