What are Lemmy's feelings about the best cloud storage options these days, if you really want to break into the 1-2TB range? I'm not there yet, probably not even halfway there, but I like the peace of mind of potentially having the space if I need it. And I think subscribing to something in the Netflix price range is maybe something I'm ready for.
My thoughts so far:
pcloud - Intriguing because you can pay for a "lifetime" plan of 2TB of storage. But it's $350, which is a lot, and I don't know that I love the interface or usability, and I don't know if I trust them.
iDrive - Super affordable. 5tb for "just" $80/year. It might be the best deal, but nothing about their identity suggests to me that they are "good guys." By which I mean, I'm not sure I trust them to make long-term promises for any specific plan.
Mega - I like its very anti-google, very encrypted attitude. Born from the ashes of megaupload, they built encryption and zero knowledge into it. I LOVE that you can connect to it through the android app Solid Explorer and therefore don't even need the mega app if you don't want it. I hear bad things about it though? And it's pretty expensive at $115 per year for 2TB.
My personal thoughts/reasoning/caveats:
Homebrew stuff: I don't quite trust myself to use a homebrew setup like Nextcloud or Syncthing correctly. There's too much in terms of labor, upkeep, catastrophic single points of failure where you could lose everything. I feel like I'm 70% of the way to being smart enough to do this.
Avoiding the Bad Guys and the Free Stuff: I've tried the free version of just about everything, from Google to Onedrive to Dropbox to Mediafire to Mega. There's even an android app that offers 1 free terrabyte?? But I don't want something from the bad guys where I'm going to be integrated into their closed source death drap: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and I don't want a too-good-to-be-true free service where I'm the product.
I also would prefer to avoid something from the upstarts who kinda-sorta imitate the bad guys: Dropbox, Mediafire, Box. Because I'm not sure how much I can trust any specific long term promise from them.
It sounds like you're saying nothing is good enough! What exactly do you want!? Something from good guys, not bad guys. Something like Standardnotes, but for file storage. They emphasize privacy, good governance principles and longevity of their service. Or Linode, with their independence, sense of mission, love of Linux & free software, all of which tells me they are good guys.
Probably the correct answer is (1) here's this magical perfect source I never thought of, or (2) I'm thinking this much about it, I should probably do Nextcloud or syncthing given all the constraints that I'm putting out there.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on cloud storage. What are yours?
One thing to keep in mind with something like Syncthing is where the physical location of the other machine(s) is. The nice thing about cloud storage is that your data is in an entirely different geographic region, so if there's a hurricane, flood, fire, etc. your data is still safe. That being said, I use Google drive at the moment so I'll also be keeping an eye on this post for alternatives.
Similar boat to you. The "perk" of using Google Drive, is that I use it for everything else so it keeps everything in the same place for me.