I back up some of the contents of my computer, and all my photos, in Google Drive. I'm not a big picture-taker, and any photos I really love I print out and put in that old-fashioned thing, a photo album.

I back up the things on my computer that I'd like to be able to access on my phone, like spreadsheets of my book collection, but as with the photos, anything that's really important I also have in a hard copy. I trust the cloud...up to a point.

I use Dropbox but not the cloud. I have four large external hard drives that I use for storing photos, music, and videos. I hate tons of photos taken before digital cameras were very good, and I have not gotten around to scanning most of them yet. For some reason, I do not trust the cloud, and I use Dropbox mainly so that I can access certain documents when traveling. I don't store much of anything on my computer's internal hard drive - I've lost too much from previous crashes, including photos that I could never replace.

Everything — photos, documents, music, browser history, whatever — gets automatically saved to iCloud. I can access it all from any of my devices (iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro). If any of them were lost or stolen, I wouldn’t lose any of my stuff. I honestly don’t know how I “survived” pre-Apple!

Same as Sammy. iphones, ipads, mac's, apple tv...everything goes there. 50 gb is .99 month.

I'm not sure if there's a term misunderstanding going on here but the term "the cloud" is generic and means "somewhere on the internet". Stuff uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, or any other storage service is in "the cloud".

My answer to the question is No. I backup important files to redundant external USB hard drives, one of which is kept offsite in a bank safe deposit box. Stuff that works automatically (read "The Apple Way") rarely functions to my liking and I prefer to do things manually.

I use iCloud and OneDrive for most everything. I keep hard copy of tax information and filings in a safe deposit box in addition to the digital version.

I don't store much of anything on my computer's internal hard drive - I've lost too much from previous crashes, including photos that I could never replace.

Another (major) reason I’m much happier using Apple: no crashes!! In my Windows-based PC days, CTRL-ALT-DEL was my friend, or rather, my savior. Bad stuff just never happens with Apple, knock on wood...and no viruses — yet. Dare I say, Apple is idiot-proof!

Yes -- I back up to an external hard drive but "the cloud" would be a just-in-case of flood/hurricane/.... you name something. My friend had two external hard drives fail; that's why I thought of it.

Fun2b, Brushworks, Sammy, Lars, Bookwoman -- do you send everything to the cloud at the moment it's created? Do a daily backup to the cloud? Do you pay for more space on DropBox?

Nope.

Sammy, the world of Windows you're describing is 15 years ago or more as far as I recall. Or what was encountered on broken, underequipped or misused PCs. For me, using Apple products was annoying and frustrating back then, before then, and still is today. Everyone finds different things they like, you've found yours and I've found mine.

bleusblue2, I have it set up so that Google Drive automatically backs up files in certain locations, whether I've created a new file or have just modified an existing one. It does this immediately. And it's all free, up to 15 GB; you can pay for more if you need it.

I use a chromebook and my cellphone and my android tablets. They are all set up for backup to Google drive and Google photos.

Bleusblue2, I save everything to my cloud account rather than my local device when using my Windows laptop. My Apple devices automatically store to iCloud when they do their daily back-up. Some things, like music and photos, I store on iCloud, but also have downloaded to most of my devices. Apple keeps them all in sync.

bleus,

When setting up cloud storage, manage it with two-factor authentication.

When accessing financial sources via mobile apps, it's already on the cloud and protected by your bank, investment firm, etc. Most will always require or advise two-factor authentication.

Just be smart and use the security tools provided.

I use One Drive when working from home. Whatever my assignment is that day, a supervisor uploads the necessary files to OneDrive and I access them to do my work. I would never, ever use any "cloud" to backup my computer. I just don't want my sensitive data out there. I do my backups on USB thumb drives, since they're dirt cheap. Like Elmer, one is stored offsite.

I find it useful to mentally replace the phrase "in the Cloud" with "on someone else's computer" It's accurate and it makes some decisions obvious. Change the question "Do I want to store my tax return data in the cloud?" to "Do I want to store my tax return data on someone else's computer?" and to me at least the answer is a resounding no.

If some data is sensitive in some way, and you store it "in the cloud" where you can access it via the Internet, then you are trusting that cloud hosts assertions that they have good security practices, and trustworthy employees and that they will not go out of business or unilaterally change the agreement between you and them.

bob_cville said

"I find it useful to mentally replace the phrase "in the Cloud" with "on someone else's computer" It's accurate and it makes some decisions obvious. Change the question "Do I want to store my tax return data in the cloud?" to "Do I want to store my tax return data on someone else's computer?" and to me at least the answer is a resounding no."

I do agree with that. For just that reason, I don't want to upload all my files. I also understand that Dropbox is not secure so definitely wouldn't want my financial business there. Well, I've also seen that Dropbox is not a backup anyway. I've thought of using one of those systems like Carbonite.