A reliable cloud storage manager solution?

carlosdemacos wrote:

CloudMounter integrates with major cloud services such as GoogleDrive, OneDrive, DropBox, and more, in addition to a wide range of other platforms that support WedDAV. There's no need to download files as you can conveniently mount the clouds.

Read reviews or give it a try right away

You can mount Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, AWS S3, and any other cloud storage product in Finder (I use all 3). You don’t need any 3rd party products that can steal your data.

CloudMounter integrates with major cloud services such as GoogleDrive, OneDrive, DropBox, and more, in addition to a wide range of other platforms that support WedDAV. There's no need to download files as you can conveniently mount the clouds.

Read reviews or give it a try right away

I do not understand why you would make a deal with a company like google whose only visible means of support is selling your personal data.

The solution that "shipped in the box" with your Mac is iCloud Drive.

it is simple to use, and because it is built into MacOS, it does not punish performance while struggling to keep synchronized items up to date.

...and Apple does not sell your data.

Set up iCloud Drive - Apple Support

You might consider backing up locally rather than using the clouds. Prices for SSD's have come down in price over the years. I still use OneDrive but most of what backup I back up locally.

"On the cloud" is great for sharing photos, but is not a viable backup solution for everything you have. The stuff is not under your control, and is subject to sloppy handling, arbitrary changes in policy, theft, accidental deletion, data loss [are they making frequent backups using best practices?], and discontinuation or throttling of the service. It can easily take three days to restore it at ordinary Internet speeds.

If you do not have a recent local, disk-based backup, your computer is like a ticking Time bomb. You are only one disk failure, one crazy software, or one "oops" away from losing EVERYTHING! Drives do not last forever. It is not a question of IF it will fail, only WHEN it will fail. In addition, you never know when crazy software or Pilot Error throws away far more than you intended.

If you are using another direct-to-disk backup method that you prefer, and you currently have a recent disk-based backup, that is great. If not, you should consider using Built-in Time Machine. Take steps to acquire an external drive as soon as possible. If you buy one, a drive 2 to 3 times or larger than your boot drive is preferable for long term trouble-free operation. Do not pay extra for a drive that is fast.  (You can get by for a while with a "found" smaller drive if necessary, but it will eventually become annoying).

Attach your external drive and use

System preferences > Time machine ...

... to turn on Time Machine and specify what drive to store your Backups on.  It may ask to initialize the new drive, and that is as expected. APFS format is default format if running MacOS 11 Big Sur or later.

Time machine works quietly and automatically in the background, without interrupting your regular work, and only saves the incremental changes (after the first full backup). Time machine backs up every connected drive that is in a Mac compatible format. it can not back up Windows format drives.

Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it is the backup that gets done. It does not ruin performance of the rest of the computer while doing its backup operations. You do not have to set aside a "Special Time" when you only do backups. When you need it, your Time machine Backup is much more likely to be there.

How to use Time Machine to Backup or Restore your Mac:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

<< None of them are written by people who are paid to push the software. >>

Sarcasm does NOT work in this written medium between readers and writers who do not know each other.

You MUST club readers over the head with simple DIRECT (not subtle) statements to be sure to get the point across.

(sometimes an emoji added is all you need.)

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

<< None of them are written by people who are paid to push the software. >>

Sarcasm does NOT work in this written medium between readers and writers who do not know each other.

You MUST club readers over the head with simple DIRECT (not subtle) statements to be sure to get the point across.

(sometimes an emoji added is all you need.)

That user was not really my intended audience. It's not clear to me that I was addressing an actual human, so, I wasn't concerned with the niceties.

But, in general, I agree. ;-)

As I said below I use a local backup, but that being said, use cloud storage if you want the files to snyc across devices. Google Drive, OneDrive. I don't use Dropbox since they have been hacked twice over the past two years. I do you Box.net occasionally but I also believe they have been hack. There is also Mega.

carlosdemacos wrote:

Read reviews or give it a try right away

Because online reviews are always so accurate. None of them are written by people who are paid to push the software.