One Drive and it’s kind can be useful for a number of things.
- Spread the copies of files onto multiple machines – a sort of backup.
- Access documents from anywhere you can get on a browser with an internet connection, and these days edit them too.
- Share files with others (but this can be quite crude).
If you can make them work for you they a good solution.
I found that none of them quite did what I wanted, plus they insist you be a member of their club and accept their ideas on workflow and applications. You also have to accept their idea of security (probably OK) and backup (usually none).
I decided to go down the Synology route as it gives me that control. It has a number of apps so you can tailor the sort of personal “Cloud” (I hate that word) you want as well as taking advantage of the public offerings and integrating them into your world. QNAP would allow you to do the same, but SOHO products like Western Digital My Cloud or Seagate Personal Cloud are just too lacking and aren’t much cheaper.
There are also some big advantages using “grown up” applications and the best for me is versioning. Any document in my PCs Cloud Station folder is synchronised with the NAS and it keeps a database of the last 32 versions of the files (as well as a recycle bin). My daily backup does the same for the other files on the system. For both de-duplication keeps the storage requirements down to a minimum. You just can’t do that with public cloud services.
TBH I only use Photo Station because it’s there. I can get Google Photos to do the same job, but if I got run over by a bus tomorrow the family photo’s wouldn’t go with me ?
.
