Current remote backup service advice please!

I'm afraid i have not kept up with all the changes that keep happening; as my doctor used to say 25 years ago, i'm getting old...

Though i think i am fairly good at being careful, sooner or later i will click on the wrong thing or visit the wrong website, and even if i don't, someone in my home will, and i will get some sort of malware, the worst of my fears being ransomware.

I keep my OS and anti-malwares up to date, but the risk of loss scares the heck out of me.

I think i need an automated cloud backup as a solution, but i have found there are so many, and among them, i keep seeing comments like one-or-another "is great until you need to restore your files and then it fails", or the like.

I just want an efficient set-it-and-forget-it solution so if my files ever were corrupted for any reason, i could restore them. I have roughly 1TB of files that i am concerned with, but a little wiggle room for the future is a good thing.

I know this sort of question begs hotly debated alternatives, but as i trust the expertise of you folks, i sure would appreciate knowing what you use and then i could focus on the top several. I am sorry to say it, but i can't afford any ultimate solution, so if we could be sound and "monetarily efficient" at the same time, it would reduce stress.

I appreciate your support, very much.

Thank-you.

What are the 1 tb files photos,docs, music ,video as it makes a difference Google has unlimited backup for photos for free.

Thank-you, Samuria!

Roughly 50GB of photos, 17GB Documents (mainly .docx and .pdf), and i see another 15GB in downloads i want to safeguard (i can bet well over 2/3 of those i really don't need; i can be a bit of a pack-rat).

Hmmmm, now that i evaluate the core of that which i want to protect, there is certainly less than i thought, yet still, highly valued, and i just can't trust to a local drive or a process that would call for me to take some sort of action. I also would very much like the solution not to use up much overhead during the day, for i use this computer for all of my business processing and records.

I once had all my photos going to some free service, but then they chose to cut way back and i just never kept up with finding a proper alternative. For some reason i had thought Google, but just as likely MS or something similar.

Storage is cheap in real terms and 1 or 2Tb drive isn't all that much in the scheme of things. Have a hard copy yourself at home (or somewhere safe) would be my advice. Use the drive purely for backup.

By all means investigate cloud storage as well... but you need your own copies as well imo. Companies go bust, terms and conditions change and so on. Who knows what might happen to your valuable files.

Your 50 + 17 + 15Gb is under one tenth of a Tb and very manageable. You could set up WIndows File History on a separate partition on your main PC and just copy its contents as and when you want to removable storage as an archiving process.

Lots of possibilities but I would be wary of relying 100% on a 3rd party cloud solution.

@Mooly - Thank-you; i thought maybe i was just a bit paranoid. I had thought that if hackers get millions of supposedly highly protected items of information on a regular basis, then cloud storage was probably even more vulnerable, they just had not yet figured out a way of monetizing the theft or destruction.

I suspect a dual method as you suggest is the smartest route, yet i still need to choose a cloud method that would make the best sense! Oh, and buy an external drive...

Certainly Google backup and sync will backup all lost photos all for free you install it select folders for photos and videos and it will automatically backup along with a new ones. The best of Google is you can search all your photos by date or content is ��,house,sea etc. I have over 10 years of photo about 500 gig

I think it is very possible that i have over-rated the cloud "solutions" and simply need to get a couple external SSDs (i specify SSD as it is my understanding that once those fail, they become the same as a read-only drive, as opposed to an HDD that can become a mes of scratched disks...) and set up a weekly or so routine of writing all that i value to it. Years ago when i was corporate (what a horrible word) i pushed them to maintain 7 daily, 5 weekly, 12 monthly and annual backup drives, but dang!, i suspect that two backup drives, in case i backup trash at some point before realizing it, would be within reason.

I hate not being able to go set-it-and-forget-it as i really don't trust myself, but i guess progress in the right direction is still better than nothing.

Anyone see any flaws in my present thinking?

Here is what I do...

1/ I make daily disk image backups (full system images) using AOMEI (a free disk imaging program) to a separate partition on my PC's main drive. This gives me instant 'restorablity' without even needing to plug another drive in should anything go wrong with my main Windows installation... for whatever reason. Sometime I just want to try something out knowing I will be altering lots of stuff and a restore back from that state is quick and easy.

Those system backups also carry all your personal stuff of course. So win win on that score.

The BIG problem is that the backup resides on the PC and so is definitely NOT safe. Anything could happen at any time.

Those backups can be archived off the PC (just copy the image file to another drive) and in the worst case scenario could be browsed by another PC running the same backup program and files copied and extracted. Messy but its a last resort option that would work. The file would also allow you to reinstall back to a new HDD if the one in the PC failed.

2/ Use File History in the same way and copy and archive data as and when to a safe location.

3/ Use those Flash Drives. Simply right click and send your docs/music/pics to a Flash Drive. Use a two or three in rotation and so you ALWAYS have a valid copy of personal stuff. That is the best, easiest and simplest method of just having a safe copy of files.

Drives can fail in any way you could imagine and so your backup strategy has to cover for all possibilities.