And this is why "Cloud Computing" can never completely replace a local copy

[Dark Jaguar]

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/200...-cloud.ars

This basically shows why I STILL want to keep stuff I own locally. Cloud computing is great for some things, but the reality is you can't depend on those backups being there forever. It's the same reason you would want to buy your own copy of a book even if your library has plenty of fresh copies.

[Dark Jaguar]

And just after I post this I read an update that informs me that they may actually be able to recover a lot of data after all. Small confort to those who don't end up getting their data back, or those who needed that data NOW and not after a long wait.

It only goes to show local copies are important too.

[A Black Falcon]

Just trust them, it'll all be fine on computer networks far away that have unknown reliability!

... Yeah, you're absolutely right. :)

[Dark Jaguar]

This is not to say that I'm not impressed by cloud computing. For a lot of things it'll be great. I'm just not convinced it'll out and out replace local storage. I certainly intend on keeping my personal saved files local at the very least, with "the cloud" simply a backup.

Storage in the terabyte range is getting so cheap now that it's hardly a big problem to keep storing a lot of stuff locally anyway.

[Weltall]

I'd never want to give up, entirely, the ability to store and manage files locally.

I saw TB drives yesterday for a hundred dollars. It made me remember back to 2000, when I bought my first internal hard drive. It was 20GB, and cost the same, $100.

Amazing to think that the drive I saw yesterday would have cost more than $5000 less than ten years ago, and that's a generous estimate. In ten years, 50TB hard drives will be found at Wal-Mart, and probably for less than $100.