You do know that iCloud is a synchronization tool

and not a backup tool.

Right.

If you didn't know that this is the episode you need to listen to because not

only do we explain why that's the case.

I give you a really good answer as to how you can solve this.

The problem for both your iPhone and your Android.

it took me weeks of research and I think it's a great episode.

I hope you like it.

Hi, and welcome to Backup Centrals Restored All podcast.

I'm your host, W.

Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.

Backup, and have with me a guy who was trying to get me to spend like a thousand

dollars more than I wanted to today.

Prasanna Malaiyandi.

How's it going?

Prasanna,

I'm good.

Curtis.

Be lucky.

It's only a thousand dollars more.

I could have been like five grand more.

be like at least a thousand,

I was thinking more like $800 more.

Oh, but taxes too.

You're right.

Yeah,

I mean you, the thing is, I, I'm generally the same as you in

this scenario, you know, in this scenario.

So what we're talking about is that, is that, uh, I am now, um, independent

from my former employer and, uh, I wanted to get a new laptop cuz you

know, because I had a laptop provided by my previous employer and they, um,

they want it back.

um, you know, they want it

back, you know.

So, uh, it was, it was a condition of my, uh, you know, the thing I signed there.

Uh, you know, that's generally the way these things work, right?

Um, and, uh, so I needed one.

I.

And what I actually decided to do in the end was by a, uh, right, right.

Now, since I am neither fully employed or fully figured out what it is that I

Yeah, you wanna be a little

uh, replace employee, but I want to be, I want

to spend as little as possible.

So what I did was I actually bought the exact same model of the

laptop that I had been provided.

So that for two, for two reasons.

One is it was much less expensive.

It was a thousand bucks, uh, like out the door, like shipping

included and everything.

And it'll be here in a couple of days.

And the, um, the, uh, other reason is that it has the exact same port configuration,

so I can use all of the, all of

For, for listeners who don't notice or who don't know, uh,

if you go, I think we probably talked about Curtis's dongle slash device

accessory issues for at least maybe 10 or 15 of the podcasts, I think.

I think,

And the thing is, I feel like I have like the perfect setup

now, and if I get, you know, like if I get like an M one or M two, uh, MacBook, the

port configuration will be different and I will lose, I will not be able to use this,

what I think of as the perfect one, cuz I have to, this model has the two, uh, U S

B C, um, ports right next to each other.

So it's this dongle that plugs into both of them and then takes over.

It's just, it's just very nice.

oh, Curtis.

But we are a creatures of habit, I guess, and I know you've spent months

and months trying to deal with U S B hub issues, so I'm glad I'm not having

that conversation with you again.

I did, I, I don't want to deal with that right now.

I want to figure out what's next for me and, uh, still doing that.

I, I have some really good, uh, ideas For those of you that are listeners to

the podcast, um, I am leaning towards being independent and doing, um, you

know, content generation, including podcasts, um, you know, papers, website,

content, videos, um, and reviews of Dongs.

Um, just do, just do, just do dongle reviews, um,

is a lot of stuff out there, by the way, dongle wise.

They're, they're, yeah.

Uh, just go, yeah.

It, it's, it's ridiculous.

And I've been through a few of them, right?

Um, yeah.

So,

Since you,

want to do that

yeah.

Since you've talked about being independent, do you want

to throw out our disclaimer.

Yes.

I will throw out our usual disclaimer.

This is an independent podcast and, uh, the opinions that you hear are ours.

Uh, This is a new version of this disclaimer, so I'm practicing it here.

Uh, the opinions that you hear are ours and do not necessarily reflect those of

our employers or non employers in my case.

And, um, be sure to rate us@ratethispodcast.com slash restore.

And also if you'd like to join the conversation, you can reach me.

Uh, I'd love, you know, we'd love to have you on the podcast.

Uh, I'm w Curtis Preston gmail at wc preston on twitter, linkedin.com/in/mr.

Backup.

And, um, uh, you know, just.

Reach out to me, what you wanna talk about, et cetera.

We're a kind,

I think our guests like us, so Yeah.

They do.

They, they seem to enjoy the, the experience.

We're not, we're not mean.

Um, I mean, Prasanna can be sometimes,

I ask questions, that's all.

yeah, it's really good at doing that.

Um, and speaking of questions, this episode, uh, it all

goes back to something.

Somebody brought it up on a podcast, didn't

Yeah.

It was, uh, I think it wasn't this part of the Sue Peterson podcast where she was,

Was it?

how do I recover from my environment?

This is where it all started.

And then you were like, oh, I have data in iTunes or in iCloud.

Yeah.

What do I do with my data?

And they started this whole long saga.

So I think by the time this goes live, the Sue Peterson slash Daniel Rosehill

episode will be published, right?

Talking about how do you recover your environment and where do you start from?

But that sort of kicked off this discussion about,

Hey, what does Curtis do?

Or what does Mr.

Backup do with his, uh, iCloud

his own stuff.

With, with, with, with arguably what some might consider my most

important data, which are the

Aw.

grandkid.

Um, so, so here, so here's the thing.

What, so I, I have an iPhone, I have an iCloud account.

I pay for the extra storage.

so when I started Prasanna, what, what do you, you're in a, you're in a, you

know, you're in the beginning of this.

What, what, what do you, what do you Google?

iCloud photo backup.

Yeah.

Like, how do I back up?

My, my eye photos, my, you know, how do I back it?

Yeah.

Right.

And what is the answer on every one of the articles that I got?

Do use iCloud.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'm like, but that's not a backup.

That is not a backup.

Please tell me that's not, you know, um, that was so frustrating, right.

Um, was that, uh, so I, so I had to find, I wanted a consumer level

answer, and I wasn't getting one.

That was the answer that I was getting.

I was like, the whole point of this project is that my data is only in iCloud.

That is not a backup.

Um, so that's why I embarked on this project.

So everyone thinks that, oh yeah, the data on

your phone is syncing to the cloud.

The cloud, they're backing it up for you, right?

Apple's doing that, right?

Apple with the goodness of their heart, right, is taking backups

of all your pictures, making sure that you'll never lose 'em, right?

No matter what happens to your device, right?

To your iPhone, right?

Everything's always good to go in the cloud and preserved

and following the 3, 2, 1.

Rule of backup.

Yeah, it's not really like that.

Right.

Um, and,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

burst my bubble, Curtis.

um, I mean they may indeed be backing up because

in this case it is a service.

Right.

They may be indeed backing up what they give, what they

are storing on your behalf.

Like in the case of, uh, for the case of a total data center failure, for example.

They may indeed be backing that up.

But what they're not doing this, this is very similar to, I mean,

this is very similar to Microsoft 365, where they may indeed be

doing backups of that data center.

They, we, I actually know for a fact that they have, uh, delayed replication,

copies of exchange specifically.

And, um, but I also know that I've contacted them as a customer, right?

Uh, you

By

employer was a customer and, and said, Hey, can I get access?

If, if, if we lost data, can I get access?

Do any of those delayed replication copies?

And they said, absolutely not, right?

It's not for that, it's for the entire data center.

Uh, goes away and they're gonna bring it

and I think in the case of iCloud, at least when I

was reading the contract, the msa, I don't think they talked or I think

they said that there's no guarantee that you will be able to restore

your data or get back your data in case something happens that's on you.

Just what, just what you want to, just what you want to hear.

Right.

Uh, but I think the most important thing to understand about iCloud

specifically, and the, the same is true of, you know, um, Android phones

and syncing to like Google Cloud.

And that is that it is a sync, it is not a backup

and the, it is a synchronization.

Um, and that the fact that that's the case, really, it's, it's funny that I, I,

we were gonna record this episode today, and I think it was last night or this

morning, I got in my little newsfeed.

I got this story and it was like, you know, the, you know what, the way

they write headlines nowadays of like,

you know, five things you don't do with your phone and the third

one's really gonna shock you.

Um, it, it, it said like, make sure you don't make this mistake when

selling your old iPhone right now.

I was thinking the mistake would be don't erase it.

Right.

Don't you know, or not erasing it.

Right?

So you would give

Some on your data.

with all of your Prasannal data

I'm sure people do

would also be a mistake, right?

Um, it's easy to not do that, right?

You can go in and basically say, erase all data from this phone.

Um, but apparently what some people do is they just go in and erase their contacts

and they erase their photos like manually.

I, I, I don't know why you would do that,

but

your phone.

Yeah.

What's

that?

No, I'm just saying why you would do it that way.

Right.

Basically what they said was that if you are still synchronizing.

To iCloud if you didn't think to uncheck that box on that photo.

First off, I think it's a dumb way to do it.

But second, if you do it this dumb way and then you don't uncheck iCloud

synchronization, it will sync all of the deletions of your contacts and your

photos or whatever it else is you delete.

It will sync that up to iCloud, which will then sync down to the

new iPhone that you just bought.

Right?

Which means you will then delete the data from all of your devices forever.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

That's exactly what the consumer wanted, right?

Yeah.

Um, that is why iCloud is not a backup.

Right.

Um, is that it's a synchronization tool, not a backup tool.

There is zero history built into that

tool.

Um, and so I set out to, uh, on this little project of mine, and ultimately

I ended up, yeah, multi-week project.

Ultimately I ended up testing two, um, well,

three, four.

Four.

right?

Was it four?

What?

So remind me here, what did we do?

I did the, the syc.net

arsy.net.

You did.

I drive.

You did Google photos and that.

Didn't you also pull down the data to your hard drive and

then back it up with some other

that's what

Oh, that was just the RS thing.

Okay.

Yeah.

I thought you used a different one as well.

I could be wrong.

well that, well that, but that, that would all be the

same method, right?

Basically.

So, Here is the problem with the iPhone, right?

So the problem is that many people, including myself, have

optimized storage turned on.

So if I put an agent on this, if I put I was gonna lose my phone, uh, if

I put an agent on this phone, it may or may not, um, synchronize, or it,

it may not, it, it, it might back up

the, like the, the thumbnail on, right?

It might back up the thumbnail, not the original photo, which is only

up in iCloud, which again, I really should have thought about this.

I, this is bad, this is bad on me.

That means not only am I using a synchronization tool, I'm not

even using a synchronization tool.

I am knowingly.

Pushing data.

to Apple?

No, no, I'm saying, I'm saying, I'm knowingly saying to Apple,

please keep these photos that are really important to me only in one

place.

Yeah.

Oh gosh.

Even worse.

Yeah.

It's wor it's not just a synchronization tool.

It's a synchronization and optimization tool.

Um, and so I, I'm just, I'm a, I'm a little ashamed Prasanna that I, um,

Do we have like a wall of shame for Curtis, for Mr.

Backup?

I, yeah, it needs to be on there.

Um, and, and so, so

But, but, but, but, but, but wait, just be before you go on.

I think it is important to know, to tell the listeners like, you

were tricked by this feature cuz you didn't realize what it does.

I think a lot of people don't actually understand that implication, right?

That turning on this feature, because Apple makes it so easy to be like,

Hey, go buy 200 gigs of iCloud storage for a dollar 99 a month.

And by the way, I know that you bought the smaller iPhone to

save a hundred dollars a month.

Right?

Instead of going up the next level and just turn on this feature and everything

automatically goes to the cloud.

Right.

And, um, the, the irony of all of this, okay, is that when I actually saw how

much, how the size of all my photos, they would totally fit on my phone.

Like, I have a, I think I have a 256 gigabyte phone, and

I had about 60 gigabytes of

photos.

Um, which for the record is what made this whole thing possible.

Because if I had like, you know, a terabyte of photos, this every

step in this project would've taken much longer, right?

When I was looking at this, my dream would be that I could, like, if you look

at Microsoft 365, there are 50 companies all trying to sell Microsoft 365 backup

services, meaning that you can buy a service that will authenticate with

Microsoft 365, back it up and you're good.

That is not possible.

With iCloud, that was my first thing that annoyed me, is that, um, I couldn't,

there was, there's no such thing as a service that authenticates with iCloud

and then backs it up via the cloud.

That would've been the most efficient, easy way to do this.

Right.

But

I do

there is no such

I do wonder if some of that is maybe because

things are end-to-end encrypted nowadays with Apple iCloud.

I just dunno.

Yeah,

I'm gonna say it's because Apple doesn't want them to,

that's probably true.

Yeah.

Yeah,

um, right.

So, uh, the um, So the first thing, the first idea that I got was because

I didn't, I didn't, well, I didn't know what I know at the end, right?

The first thing I said, well, I need to get, so I can't go directly to the cloud.

What I need to do is I need to get those versions down here, right

down here on, on the planet Earth.

And although the cloud is also on planet Earth, but you

know what I'm saying, right?

So I got a, uh, and it, and it wasn't gonna, you know, it's not

something I'm gonna put uh, on, it's not gonna fit on a regular laptop.

So I just happened to have a portable hard drive and I just connected that

I was actually able to, using some tricks in Apple, you can specify my

pictures folder is over here, right?

There's a series of steps to move your pictures folder.

And I moved my pictures folder to this portable hard

drive and then I, um, told I.

The iCloud to synchronize, you know, my iCloud pictures down to that

To the library, I think is what they call it in.

Yeah, to the library.

Right.

And it's weird the way it stores it, and I don't like the way it stores it.

And that's a whole other thing, right?

Because it stores it in a, in a package.

Um, you know, it's just, it's just, and it means that like, well, whatever,

it, it's just annoying the way

you, it's not like you could see it in the normal

finder on your Mac where you see the folders and all the rest, right.

It and the picture

yeah, you, you can go in and say show package

contents and you can see it, but it, but anyway, it's just weird.

Um, but then what I said was, well, I need, I'm gonna try to back up.

That and the, the, there are a variety of things that you can do to do that,

where you can ba you basically, you can use any decent backup software

that is able to penetrate that package.

And everything I played with actually was able to understand

like a file

it actually, yeah, it's, well, it's really just a directory.

It's really a folder structure, um, with completely, and, and again, this is why

I'm just annoyed at, luckily this method was not the only method that worked.

So, uh, and what I chose to do, because we'd had 'em on the podcast,

I chose to use our sync.net, right?

So I paid for the minimum amount of storage that you can get

on syc.net, which was like 600 gigabytes, which was way more than I

But you didn't know at the time how much you actually

Yeah, yeah, I do.

You're right.

I didn't know how much I had and I went and I just synced that

folder, the, the pictures folder.

And it worked right?

Um, it was relatively straightforward, it synchronized it, and I could see

the folder structure over there, just like the folder structure over here.

And I could see that when I made incremental updates to.

Because that's the problem.

If it's one monolithic file, you do incremental update and you

have to back up the whole file.

You didn't have to do that.

Um, it, an incremental update would cause a, a minimal

synchronization up to our sync.

And by the way, let's just talk about our sync not there for a minute.

So, um, it was really straightforward, right?

I just needed, um, you know, a fuse mounted system on this end.

It created, um, what, what does FUSE stand for?

Uh, file system and user

space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, that's not the, that's not what the acronym means, but,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's like a user, yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

A user space file system.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I, I, so that was the only hurdle I had to, to crawl no hurdle,

crawl hurdle that I had, hurdle that I had to get over is I had to find.

A, a way to mount the, you know, to do a fuse mount on my Mac.

Right.

And, um, that wasn't, that wasn't too hard.

So I used a tool called Cloud Mounter.

I didn't have to do that.

I could have downloaded a piece of software and, um, just did that.

But I just used Cloud Mounter and, um, it basically made the syc.net a file

system on my remote, on my laptop.

And then I ran syc,

it's syc.net.

So I ran SYC and, and it was simple.

I had a copy of my stuff over there and they do history.

So that was, uh, an interesting, so they do historic copies of your file system

like snapshots,

days?

Yeah.

Like snapshots.

Yeah.

So, uh, I, I would've had history.

I would've had another copy.

Um, And that all really worked, I guess I would say of all of the

ones I did, though, it was certainly the most complicated, right?

Because I had to set up a thing over there, uh, and I had to set up

a thing over here to do the mount.

Then I had, then I have to manage the backup process.

I, you know, I mean, our sink is, if you know, ARS sink,

ars arsy, it's pretty easy.

But, um, you know, I've got all the switches that I normally use memorized.

It's really, you know, pretty

and it might be a bit overkill for you,

like for this use case, right?

Yeah, if, if, especially if you're a consumer,

if you're just a regular non-techie consumer, this is not

really an option for the average

Now, I know that you looked@syc.net and then there were

other things that you were thinking about with a similar mechanism.

Right, where it's basically, I kind of liken it to like

a dump and sweep approach.

Right,

It is a dump and sweep.

It's exactly a dump and sweep.

right.

I know you were also considering looking at our clone, right,

which is also done by Nick, right?

The creator of syc.net.

Right.

That allows you to sort of sync to various, uh, object stores.

Right.

I know you were looking at that, but I think there were also

I think, I think our clone would've been actually a

simpler method than syc.net plus syc.

Um, and that would, but it would've been the same workflow in the end.

I'm just not a fan of this workflow.

I was, I was only a fan of the workflow because at the beginning of the project,

I thought it was the only way to

make it

And.

And by fan of the workflow, it's also the fact that you're taking a picture

on your iPhone, it goes up to iCloud.

You then have to synchronize it down to your laptop.

Right.

And then I think on your laptop too.

Did you, ah, this is the one that I was gonna ask you.

I think in initially you were, were also telling it to export

the high res pictures first.

Right.

And then later you did the copy my photo library out.

Right.

No, no, that, that, that was a, that was a way

of, I did that for testing purposes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but the, um, oh, that was, because this is, this is one of the things that

I hate about the, the folder structure of the pictures is that the names of

the folder of the, of the pictures there, um, are complete nonsense.

They're, they're managed and is random and managed by Apple, and

apparently they change over time.

So like, you just have to treat that as a monolithic entity, even

though it's not technically one.

Uh, I just, I just hate that.

I just hate that whole thing.

There's nothing I like, that's why I've never used it.

I've never used that feature to store the pictures on my local, uh, hard drive.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And it's a pain, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because you have to now sync it to another device that you may not use,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and you have that external hard drive sitting around and all the rest, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's a painful process.

yeah.

So, yeah, so it requires me using the pictures folder thing that I don't like.

Uh, it requires me to hook up an external hard drive because I don't

have enough storage on the laptop.

Uh, it requires this two-step dump and sweep approach.

Um, and in the end, if I needed to restore a particular, uh, photo, I would have no

idea, which, real cuz the, the, the file names are like really, really long, right?

They're, they're, it is just complete nonsense.

So I just, I, after all that was done, it wouldn't matter whether it was oury.net or

our clone or, you know, backup exact, like it wouldn't, it wouldn't have mattered.

The other thing, and again, it's just because of the method that

I chose, syc.net, although it's.

I think it's very affordable when you're larger, when you're only

dealing with like 75 gigabytes of information, being forced to buy

600 gigabytes of stuff it, you know,

Yeah,

is wrong.

I think it was like 10 bucks a month.

And I think also the other thing to point out

is with, um, our clone, right?

Um, With, sorry, with syc.net, there was no egress costs, right.

I think with our clone, one of the things when you and I were talking

about, right, it's like, what is this really going to cost you, right?

Because it's what's your request pricing, right?

You as a user, you have to figure out what your request pricing is.

If you have to retrieve data, like say you decide to use Amazon s3, glacier

Deep Archive to store this, right?

Super cheap, cost-wise per gigabyte, but pulling the data out right might

be a little bit more expensive.

And so you have all these things that you're trying to

figure out as an end user.

Yeah.

And again, I, I was trying to view this from the concept of an end

user and, uh, just that whole thing.

The cost was a lot.

I mean, $10 a month doesn't sound like a lot, but $10 a month.

Just to back up my photos if I'm an average person is a lot.

Right?

Uh, I just, I just hated that whole process from beginning to end.

So, so fail on, on step one.

Uh, so the next option that I looked at, uh, and I was really surprised that

this was an option, and that is Google

Photos.

So I could install Google Photos, which is essentially the Amazon or

the, uh, the Android version of iCloud.

I can install it on my iPhone.

It would magically pull down the high res copies and then, uh, you

know, archive them that we're gonna come back to that in a minute.

Archive them to Google Cloud,

Yeah, and, and wait before you go.

And also, when it pulls it down, it's doing it in such a

way that it's not consuming all the space again on your phone.

I watched, uh, during all the methods that

I tried, um, never once did I see my storage change on my phone.

Right.

Um, so that was nice.

Um, but yeah, so, and we're gonna get back to the archive thing.

Um, and it's back, it's, it's like a, it's like a bastard child

between backup and archive is what, what both of these tools do.

Uh, basically they're missing this concept of, of delete.

What it is, is that Google Photos is a one way backup to, or a one-way

sync really, to, from iCloud from the photos on your phone, high-res

versions from iCloud to Google Photos.

If you delete a photo out of, um, iCloud or your phone, nothing's going

to happen to the copy that's in Google

Yeah, which is good if that's what

which is good if that's what you want, right?

Well, it's just, it's just, you just need to be aware of that, right?

Um, and it, it is you go ahead.

so what if you did the other way?

So can I go to Google Cloud and delete the photos there if I needed to?

So the, uh, good question, Prasanna, and the answer is yes.

You can go to Google Cloud, the, um, like the website.

The website, you can go to Google Photos, the website.

You can delete photos that you want to delete, and then, uh, it will sync that

back down to Google Photos and you'll get, when you open Google Photos, the

next time on your phone, you'll get this little notification said, Hey.

So I think it calls it like offline changes.

Like offline changes happened since the last time you were here.

You deleted 15 photos.

Would you like to just delete them now or would you like to review them?

And you can review what's been deleted.

And then when you do that, you have the option of deleting them both in the Google

Photos archive on your phone as well as the I, uh, the iPhoto, or no, I'm sorry.

the camera

No, it's got they, well, they have a thumb, they have a,

they have a storage optimized copy, um, just like Apple does, right?

So you, you, you have the choice of, you deleted a bunch of stuff up in Google.

Do you want to delete those from your phone?

And that was pretty slick overall.

Right?

So, because I did some, um, Optimization.

I went and bought, uh, a product called system spelled C I S D E

M, which was a duplicate finder.

I realized that I had a ton of duplicates.

I had a, outta the 11,000 photos, I had about 1600 duplicates.

Um, and that product's pretty cool in that it finds similar photos.

Um, it finds low res and high res versions of the same photos.

It finds

Like

when you did a, when you do a burst, yeah, it finds those.

Um, and then you can just literally say, select all and

delete the, delete the duplicates.

Or you can manually pick them if you want to be picky.

Me, it was 1600.

I didn't have time for that crap, so I just deleted them all.

And I was able to do that in Google Cloud, which then synchronized down to

the phone, which then synchronized over

Oh, nice.

iCloud

yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, It was 2 99 a month, right?

Uh, was the Google Cloud version.

I think my only, um, I think the fact that it is a one way

sync is probably safer, right?

So your phone could get completely hacked and nothing would happen to

the stuff that you have up in Google

Mm-hmm.

Um, you, you can do, and you can do some maintenance of like

going in and deleting photos that you really just wish you didn't take right?

And then just get rid of them and then it can, but you gotta do 'em in Google Cloud.

I think my only complaint about that is as a frequent user of icloud.com,

I found the iCloud website, uh, much easier to use for mass, mass deletes.

Right.

Literally I can just, I just hold on the command.

Key, and I'm either hitting, uh, command, delete or next command, delete

next command, delete next, whatever.

Right?

It, it just wasn't that slick when I was in Google

photos.

Um, so it was doable, but it just wasn't slick.

Right.

Um, but overall it's a decent solution.

Unfortunately, the, the reverse doesn't work.

There isn't an iPhoto app that you can load on Android to do the same

thing, which I thought was interesting.

Um,

sense from Apple's perspective, closed ecosystem and all.

Like only recently did you actually get Apple TV Plus on an Android

phone, or sorry, on an Android box.

Right.

Yeah, they don't, yeah, that's a philosophical discussion.

I don't really want to get into that.

Uh, but um, and that's what led me to my third, um, Experiment.

I guess these are all

Third option.

Yeah.

So first one fails, second one good, but

there's no Android version of it.

Um, and it's 2 99 a month.

The question is,

And you already pay for iCloud.

Oh, sorry.

And it's 2 99 a month and you already pay for iCloud, and so

now you're gonna be paying this as well to Google for 2 99 a month.

right, right.

So the question is, can we get something that's just as good, if not

better, that maybe even costs less?

Because like you said, this is like

your doomsday copy, if you will.

Right.

You're trying to be efficient from a cost perspective.

It,

Yeah.

And by the way, we could, I, you know, again, if, if all you're concerned

with this cost, there, there were some other ways that we could have done it.

Right.

I could have that, that first option.

We remember when, when I was doing the first option, we were thinking

about backing it up to like, uh, Glacier Deep archive or something.

Right.

Um, and just hoped that I didn't ever have to use it.

Right.

Um, but, but again, uh, I was trying to think like a consumer,

so thinking like a consumer, I just kept, I just kept Googling,

I think what I started Googling, uh, later was, This idea of the storage, you know,

how to back up storage optimized iPhone.

So I started searching.

Um, of like full resolution iPhone backup and, you know, various things.

Cuz again, the, the challenge was that optimized storage.

And I found, I found a number of companies who basically said,

Hey, uh, yeah, that's a problem,

You're like, great.

This doesn't help me.

right.

And I'm like, well, Google figured it out.

So clearly the API is there.

And so I found this company that I've known for years,

I've just never used them.

And that the company is called iDrive, which is kind of funny that,

you know,

They were called something else before, right?

Yeah.

I think they were, I think they were called something

else before they've been, but they've been around for a while and they are

a, a company who, you know is, is.

Um, I mean, I, I know nothing about them other than their features and you know,

how the product works and how it's priced.

they support, you know, PCs, max iPhones, iPads, and Androids to a single account.

But you've talked to their support folks?

I did talk to the support folks.

So, uh, but basically they do both Android and iPhone.

And I said, you know what?

This might be the ultimate solution.

I thought I found another company out there, but I,

but I didn't see it anywhere.

Right?

At least I was looking around if I found a second company that did this.

And if you're a company that does this, where you're backing up both

iPhone and Android, uh, you, and, and very important, and you deal with the

optimized storage issue, right?

Uh, then feel free to reach out to me and we'll do, uh,

you know, do a second episode.

So, um, so basically it was as easy to install as the, uh, Google Photos.

All I did was I, you know, I created an iDrive account.

I paid the.

Enormous fee, $2 and 95 cents for a year with a hundred gigabytes of storage.

Okay.

Uh, now I had a, I had a good, I, I had a talk with, you know, your friend in mine,

Steven, and he is like, well, there's no way they're making money with that.

And I, I was like, well, I think it's a lost leader.

You know what I mean?

Um,

Or it also

uh, and I don't know.

or, and or it also depends on how much storage people are

actually consuming, because I'm sure there are people who buy a hundred gigs or 500

gigs and they'll pay the price and they'll only be consuming, say like 50 gigs.

Right, right.

So I again, want to go, if there was a better service, a more expensive

service, I would've reviewed that.

I would've reviewed both of them.

So far, this is the only actual backup and restore piece of software

that does what I needed to do.

And it happens to cost $2 and 95 cents a year for up to a hundred gigabytes,

which was more than enough to cover my

And I think the 500 gig was like 7

95 or something for the year.

Uh, yeah, it's, let me just, uh, yeah, 500 gig is 9 95 a year.

Once you go up to over 500 gigs, then you have to go into their personal

plan and it's $60 for the first year.

See what I mean?

Like it goes from $10 to $60, but that goes up to five, uh, terabytes.

Right.

And they're running a deal right now where

you get $8 for the first year for five terabytes of cloud backup.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So they, they definitely have some aggressive pricing.

So how did it work?

Um, I installed it.

Yeah, I installed it.

I backed up, I restored, I deleted photos, I restored the deleted photos.

It restored them in place, et

so, but what, I know you're briefly talking about

like the installation process.

So you installed an app on your phone, you went to the iDrive

website, you created an account,

right,

in on your phone into that account, and then Baa Bing, baa boom.

Done.

Yeah.

You just selected a couple of options.

It was like, do you wanna back up photos or videos or both?

Do you also, I think it also does, you know, contacts, uh, stuff like that.

And, um, then it just took, like, in my case, it took, and this is why the project

took so long, is it takes a couple of days to back up, you know, 60 gigabytes

of photo over a, you know, a cell

phone connection.

And for those listeners who are keeping track of this,

it should be a drinking game, I think.

I think this is the sixth time Curtis is uploading his photo library to the cloud.

Yeah.

Which is why if I, if, if I was like a 500 gigabyte library, this

would've taken months, right?

Um, and by the way, each time I am uploading, I am then restoring the

entire library down to a folder.

And then I'm doing a, a, a diff between the size of the folder

and, you know, and I'm doing visual inspection of the different photos.

So with both the Google photo and the iDrive photo, I was able to verify

that they are storing the entire, you know, the, the, the, the full

resolution version of the photo.

Um, and, um, it was just, and, and most importantly, it was cheap and easy, right?

This, this was, this was the cheapest and the easiest, I think.

I think the Google photo again would also work.

Um, maybe it's a bigger brand name.

Maybe you like that.

Um, I, I like that With this.

By the way, with this, um, it's also a, it's not a one way sink,

but it's a backup without deletion.

So it keeps track of, um, like if I restore the whole thing, like it, it

will always be able to restore a photo.

But if I restore the entire library, I'm going to get all of the stuff

I've backed up from that library.

Including all the

do garbage collection included on include,

yeah, you can do garbage collection, but that's a manual process.

Basically the, cuz they give you, you know, in this case up to 500 gigabytes and

the, um, cuz I did by the way, actually upgrade to the 500 gigabyte plan for 10

bucks, uh, and start backing up my laptop.

And so the, um, but if you delete something and then.

You want this reclaim that space.

Uh, you have to do a manual compaction.

And I, I think that's like my one complaint, um, is that it didn't seem

to have the point in time concept that I'm familiar with in the backup space.

And what would you consider that, like,

that's a little weird, right?

Not having, Hey, I'm gonna bring your world back to a certain point in time.

yeah, that was, that's why, that's why like both of these,

I, I kind of, they're kind of, they're almost like archives and less like

backup, but they do backup and restore.

Um, If, if, if I could, if I could make a, a very strong suggestion

to both of them, but especially IDR because it is advertising itself as a

backup software, it should understand the concept of point in time.

I should be able to restore.

I understand they, you know, for, they'd see it as a feature to keep the older

stuff, that's fine, but I should be able to restore the way my iPhone looked

yesterday and the fact that I deleted a bunch of stuff two weeks ago, those

photos should not come back and then I have to go and redo the deletion.

That took me so long to do.

Um, yeah, and again, average consumer not gonna think about that.

Maybe the average consumer doesn't clean up,

I think that's the thing.

Well, think about it, right?

If, if you didn't have that system tool right, you probably would never have

gotten rid of your 1600 duplicates.

Cause it's not worth your

Yeah.

But I do, at least me, again, I can only speak about me.

I regularly, like in the la Let, lemme just pull up my phone here because

I am always sending goofy stuff to

you, right?

I'm scrolling through my photo library.

I see ju ju just like, you know, for those of you that are just in, wait on

the video, um, just in like this page, I see like 20 photos that I took so

that I could send them to you or send 'em to somebody else, and then I need

to then like immediately delete them.

But I don't

immediately delete 'em.

But then like a week later, I then go delete them.

Well, those photos would still be in iDrive,

Yep.

right?

So they really should get the concept of.

Um, point in time

to do a point in time, you know?

So,

I didn't code

yeah.

But I, I, I'd say if we, if we go all the way back to

the beginning, How do I back up my iPhone and my Android with, with ease

and relatively low cost Right now, the only answer I have for that is, uh,

iDrive and if you have an iPhone, I also have the answer of Google Photos

and

would your answer change if you

were not subscribed to iCloud?

no,

Okay.

I, I don't know how,

No, that's

else would you do?

no, no.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's

I mean, if you're not subscribed to iCloud, you definitely

have to have something, right?

Because then everything's all on that

Yep.

And that's all you got?

at least in iCloud.

I'm gonna guess, I don't know for a fact, but I'm gonna guess that

the stuff that I'm storing in iCloud is at least on raid, right?

My, your

phone, it's, a single

well, it's probably on object storage somewhere, right?

So,

Right.

It's on object storage, probably using, uh, eraser coating.

My point is a single device is not gonna take out, um, yeah.

But, um, so I

But I'm, I'm, I'm glad you did this

experiment though, Curtis, because honestly, I wasn't aware of this.

Granted, I don't use iCloud, right?

But I wasn't aware of this.

I think a lot of people, like you said, make the assumption

iCloud is a backup tool.

I don't have to worry about this.

They probably were like, Hey, I wanna optimize storage.

Let's turn that on without realizing the implications.

So I'm glad someone at least did the due diligence to actually figure

out, okay, what does this mean and what are possible solutions?

So thank you.

Hey, you are welcome.

In, in my best Maui voice.

You are welcome.

You know, I don't, I probably wasn't even in the right key or whatever.

Do you even know what I'm talking about?

Okay.

There is the, your welcome song.

So, uh, and by the way, if I would really love to hear if there are other things

that I could not find, uh, you know, if you're a product that does this and

you deal with the storage optimization problem, then, uh, so by the way, maybe

that's another answer to the question.

Don't use storage optimization and use any iPhone or Android backup tool.

Right.

Um,

the other one also to mention is this only captures

and backs up things that iDrive has access to, which includes your

photos, your iOS photos, right?

So things in your photo, in your camera roll, right?

Your contacts, but it doesn't necessarily include photos that might only be

stored in an application, right?

That isn't sharing it like maybe in WhatsApp or some other type of application

or other data and video created natively within an application, right?

So this solution wouldn't work for that.

So just be aware of it.

It's not gonna cover everything, but I think for a lot of people, they're just

using the native camera roll, right?

So, or camera in iOS or Android.

And so this should work for that, and it is gonna back up

and at least protect that data.

Yeah, exactly.

I, I know I have a handful of other apps.

Like I have a audio recording app and that stores data locally on the

phone and also synchronizes it with my cloud account for that company.

Um, that's part of that service.

But that also is a synchronization.

It's not a backup.

But I don't short of like imaging my phone, I got nothing.

Just a quick editor's note.

If you like to try, I drive, I put a link in the show description that

will get you 90% off the first year.

And also we do get a referral fee which will help support this podcast.

I wanna say thank you to those of you.

Well, I wanna say thank you Brisa for excitedly waiting for the conclusion

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No, I've been waiting.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm glad.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm glad that you actually saw it through to the end, Curtis, and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

thanks for sharing your results.

And, uh, thanks again to the listeners.

Be sure to subscribe so that you can restore it all