The premium plan from Google has 2 TB and costs about the same annually as the electricity for the NAS that the GP comment suggested for comparison (at 100% usage). So at the same ONGOING cost (not even counting initial investment), the NAS has 8 times more storage. 16 times if you assume it will be mostly idle. Except if you want high availability with RAID, then you're back to 8 times. And haven't yet thought about backups.
All this assuming that you even need that much storage, which most people definitely do not.
I'm willing to bet that far more data has been lost to people serving their own data, than Google has lost data.
In any case, you should always make backups regardless of where your data is stored. At home, your biggest threat is loss of data, probably through hardware malfunction, house fires or similar.
In the cloud your biggest threat is not loss of data but loss of access to data. Different scenarios but identical outcomes.
Backup solves both scenarios, RAID doesn't solve any of them, but sadly, many people think "oh but I've got RAID6 so surely I cannot lose data".
How much space do you realistically need high availability, redundant storage for ?
For my personal use case, that involves photos and documents, all things i cannot easily recreate (photos less so). Those are what matters to me, and storing them in the cloud means i not only get redundancy in a single data center, but also geographical redundancy as many cloud providers will use erasure coding to make your data available across multiple data centers.
Everything else will be just fine on a single drive, even a USB drive, as everything that originated on the internet can most likely be found there again. This is especially true for media (purchased, or naval aquisition). Media is probably the most replicated data on the planet, possibly only behind the bible and IKEA catalog.
So, back to the important data, i can easily fit an entire family of 4 into a single 2TB data plan. That costs me somewhere around €85 - €100 per year, for 4 people, and it works no matter what i do. I no longer need to drag a laptop with me on vacation, and i can basically just say "fuck it" and go on vacation for 2 weeks.
> everything that originated on the internet can most likely be found there again
I would that this were true. I guess it depends on what you mean by "the internet", but there's a reason the Internet Archive exists. Sure, you don't need to back up your recent Firefox installer or your Debian ISO but lots of important and valuable data can't be found on the internet anymore. There are very valid reasons that groups like Archiveteam [1] do what they do, not to mention recent headlines like individuals losing access to their entire cloud storage [2].
If you need to commute to work daily, and you're concerned about the cost, you don't really care if you're comparing a city car vs a sports car vs the bus, despite on goes at 80km/h, and another can do 230km/h, if all you're interested in is the price.
Obviously as your storage needs increase, so will cloud costs, but unless you're a professional photographer, I'm guessing 2TB will be more than enough for most people.
Again, not talking about people trying to run their own media server on pirated content, and saving money that way. In my book that's comparable to saving money by robbing a bank. You're not saving anything, you're breaking the law, and 9 out of 10 times, it's cheaper to steal someone else's bike than it is taking a taxi home.
I'm talking actual storage for data you actually own, and possibly even data you have created yourself. Anything that came from the internet can be found on the internet again, purchased or naval acquisition.
The premium plan from Google has 2 TB and costs about the same annually as the electricity for the NAS that the GP comment suggested for comparison (at 100% usage). So at the same ONGOING cost (not even counting initial investment), the NAS has 8 times more storage. 16 times if you assume it will be mostly idle. Except if you want high availability with RAID, then you're back to 8 times. And haven't yet thought about backups.
All this assuming that you even need that much storage, which most people definitely do not.
Google cloud has deleted user's data by mistake in the past.
I'm willing to bet that far more data has been lost to people serving their own data, than Google has lost data.
In any case, you should always make backups regardless of where your data is stored. At home, your biggest threat is loss of data, probably through hardware malfunction, house fires or similar.
In the cloud your biggest threat is not loss of data but loss of access to data. Different scenarios but identical outcomes.
Backup solves both scenarios, RAID doesn't solve any of them, but sadly, many people think "oh but I've got RAID6 so surely I cannot lose data".
Having experienced batches of faulty HDDs in a home NAS, you can definitely lose data with RAID6/ZFS-2 even.
Of course, syncing a NAS between yourself and a friend or family member's home may be the better solution over cloud options.
How much space do you realistically need high availability, redundant storage for ?
For my personal use case, that involves photos and documents, all things i cannot easily recreate (photos less so). Those are what matters to me, and storing them in the cloud means i not only get redundancy in a single data center, but also geographical redundancy as many cloud providers will use erasure coding to make your data available across multiple data centers.
Everything else will be just fine on a single drive, even a USB drive, as everything that originated on the internet can most likely be found there again. This is especially true for media (purchased, or naval aquisition). Media is probably the most replicated data on the planet, possibly only behind the bible and IKEA catalog.
So, back to the important data, i can easily fit an entire family of 4 into a single 2TB data plan. That costs me somewhere around €85 - €100 per year, for 4 people, and it works no matter what i do. I no longer need to drag a laptop with me on vacation, and i can basically just say "fuck it" and go on vacation for 2 weeks.
> everything that originated on the internet can most likely be found there again
I would that this were true. I guess it depends on what you mean by "the internet", but there's a reason the Internet Archive exists. Sure, you don't need to back up your recent Firefox installer or your Debian ISO but lots of important and valuable data can't be found on the internet anymore. There are very valid reasons that groups like Archiveteam [1] do what they do, not to mention recent headlines like individuals losing access to their entire cloud storage [2].
[1] https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Main_Page [2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/aws_wipes_ten_years/
I just need you to make comparisons that are fair.
I thought they were.
If you need to commute to work daily, and you're concerned about the cost, you don't really care if you're comparing a city car vs a sports car vs the bus, despite on goes at 80km/h, and another can do 230km/h, if all you're interested in is the price.
Obviously as your storage needs increase, so will cloud costs, but unless you're a professional photographer, I'm guessing 2TB will be more than enough for most people.
Again, not talking about people trying to run their own media server on pirated content, and saving money that way. In my book that's comparable to saving money by robbing a bank. You're not saving anything, you're breaking the law, and 9 out of 10 times, it's cheaper to steal someone else's bike than it is taking a taxi home.
I'm talking actual storage for data you actually own, and possibly even data you have created yourself. Anything that came from the internet can be found on the internet again, purchased or naval acquisition.
Sorry, you make some good arguments but then mix them up with clueless assertions.
2 TB ought to good for everyone is hilarious. There is so many people I know who would fill 512 GB phone in 1-2 year with photos and videos.
Maybe you do not have use case or situation where larger storage is needed. But it is strange to assume everyone in same bucket.