What are the merits of making local backups of cloud storage

TrueNAS General
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I’d like to have you guys’ input on something that some of you probably have done a lot of thinking about: Why backup cloud storage to a NAS?

The typical small business or home user thinks of cloud storage as backup, not as being in need of being backed up. Dropbox, for example, offers its customers file recovery from deletions or modifications over a 180 day time span, with higher-volume customers up to 360 days. Why is that not sufficient? Microsoft wants you to back up your local Documents, Downloads, Photos, etc. folders to OneDrive. Is that good enough?

I for one used to have my family’s five Macs backed to a RAID hooked up to an Xserve. First Apple no longer ensured compatibility of macOS Server with the evolving macOS and then my Xserve died. For a few years I only had cloud backups (not mirroring, only) of insufficient capacity. Then I came across TrueNAS and a way to set it up relatively inexpensively (Thanks, @stk !), and now I of course want to make sure that my Apple Photo’s library exists not only in iCloud. I do want to make sure that the countless CDs and DVDs I ripped before the iTunes store and Apple Music came around will be preserved. I know that Apple invests a lot in the reliability of their cloud storage, but how safe is it really?

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There are good reasons to have local storage:

  • If the vendor decides to quit the cloud storage business, you may have little or no time to off load your files.
  • Ransomware is just as possible with cloud storage as it is local storage. Even if not ransomware, someone could “take over” your cloud storage account and do what they want with it.
  • Having multiple copies increases the chances that your data will be recoverable when you need it.
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Earlier this year Google accidentally deleted a lot of data that belonged to the Australian pension fund. It seems that most of it was recovered. But is your “public voice” as powerful? Or will they just shrug and refer you to their Ts&Cs?

And what about you screwing up? This is by far the biggest risk.

Either way there is still the availability point. Is it ok for you to not have access for x days?

Azure, after the golden key breach, needs to be treated as compromised in its entirty, as far as I’m concerned.

So yes, not having a backup of your cloud data is almost as dangerous as not having a backup of your local data.

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And that includes OneDrive, right? OneDrive would just be an Azure resource, I would think.

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Correct. What I meant with “Azure” is the entire cloud offering, regardless of what its official product name is.

I use OneDrive as a target for an encrypted (incl. file names) backup from my TrueNAS system. With the regualr offers I get MS 365 Family with 61 TB cloud storage for less than 60 Euros per year. Yes, 16 TB would be nicer. But it is a good offer for my requirements.