Having just spent $1500 to retrieve data off my external hard drive I can say they offer a level of reliability far beyond personal hardware.
In addition, they offer the ability to synchronize back-ups across multiple sites far more conveniently than transporting a piece of hardware around.
They offer the added security of off-site back-ups. Fortunately, few of us ever need disaster recovery at that scale but it's insurance against many forms of catastrophic physical site events.
If your back-ups are small enough to fit conveniently on a thumb drive many of these concerns go away. Mine are not that small and as my photo archive grows I don't anticipate they will.
Finally, they offer a level of automation (without having to write and maintain scripts) that protects against my fallible memory. When I was doing my own back-ups in the pre-cloud days I found that I forgot to back up more often that I remembered. Now I have a pop-up that greets me each morning telling me whether or not last night's back-ups happened successfully.
The cost of my time to create and maintain the scripts alone would exceed the monthly fees I pay.
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In addition, they offer the ability to synchronize back-ups across multiple sites far more conveniently than transporting a piece of hardware around.
They offer the added security of off-site back-ups. Fortunately, few of us ever need disaster recovery at that scale but it's insurance against many forms of catastrophic physical site events.
If your back-ups are small enough to fit conveniently on a thumb drive many of these concerns go away. Mine are not that small and as my photo archive grows I don't anticipate they will.
Finally, they offer a level of automation (without having to write and maintain scripts) that protects against my fallible memory. When I was doing my own back-ups in the pre-cloud days I found that I forgot to back up more often that I remembered. Now I have a pop-up that greets me each morning telling me whether or not last night's back-ups happened successfully.
The cost of my time to create and maintain the scripts alone would exceed the monthly fees I pay.