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Old 25 Mar 2017, 12:11 AM   #1
sflorack
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G Suite and G Suite for Business

I have a legacy Google Apps account. I've heard that G Suite for Business includes unlimited drive storage, so I wanted to give it a try.

I couldn't find a way to sign up for the G Suite for Business directly. I had to "upgrade" to G Suite first ($5/mo/user), then upgrade to G Suite for Business ($10/mo/user).

Anyone have either (or both)? Do I do this correctly?
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Old 25 Mar 2017, 02:13 AM   #2
FredOnline
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Just logged into my Legacy account, and I'm offered upgrades to either Basic, Business or Enterprise.

What is the attraction to you to consider an upgrade - the unlimited storage?
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Old 27 Mar 2017, 12:52 PM   #3
Cory
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You did it properly. However if you have under 5 users you will only get 1 TB per user instead of unlimited.
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Old 27 Mar 2017, 02:24 PM   #4
sflorack
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FredOnline View Post
What is the attraction to you to consider an upgrade - the unlimited storage?
Yeah, pretty much. I currently have 1TB available on OneDrive but only use 300GB.. However, it WOULD be pretty nice to have unlimited cloud storage for watching saved movies/TV when I'm away from home.

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Originally Posted by Cory
You did it properly. However if you have under 5 users you will only get 1 TB per user instead of unlimited.
Actually, that's what the posted information states, but there are a TON of people who have single user accounts and are utilizing the unlimited storage. (Just look at the Google Groups.)
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Old 28 Mar 2017, 06:46 AM   #5
TenFour
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but there are a TON of people who have single user accounts and are utilizing the unlimited storage.
But, what if one day Google decided to eliminate your "unlimited" storage and just deleted whatever is over the 1TB limit? Seems like they would have a perfect right to do so. It could get ugly fast.
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Old 28 Mar 2017, 06:53 AM   #6
jhollington
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I'm one of those "TON of people," but I always assumed it was because I've been a paying Google Apps user pretty much since it came out almost ten years ago. I'm not completely certain whether the restriction applies to new users or not.

That said, there is the real possibility that Google could start enforcing the 1TB limit at any time, but that's just another reason to never trust a cloud service with exclusive copies of anything important
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Old 16 Apr 2017, 12:19 AM   #7
TenFour
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but that's just another reason to never trust a cloud service with exclusive copies of anything important
I'm not sure what is the best practice for most people. I go back and forth. I understand the worries about cloud services, but I do believe the most likely scenario for data loss is hardware or local software failure. I have seen that myself many times, but I don't believe I have ever lost anything stored in the cloud with a major provider like Microsoft, Google, or Apple. On the other hand, hard drives and equipment fail all the time. I know of one organization that lost their entire email list because someone had the addresses stored on a single laptop that died. Of course, in an ideal world, we would all have multiple backups of everything happening automatically all the time. That might include several local backup copies and several cloud copies, but in reality most of us simply don't have the time or want to deal with all that hassle. And, doesn't Google have multiple redundant copies of everything in secured facilities with equipment and people monitoring everything? Now, most of the people reading this will probably chime in and explain their detailed and very secure backup routines, but you are not the average person who just stores everything on a laptop and calls it a day.
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Old 16 Apr 2017, 01:26 AM   #8
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
I'm not sure what is the best practice for most people. I go back and forth. I understand the worries about cloud services, but I do believe the most likely scenario for data loss is hardware or local software failure.
Well, I look at it as anything is possible.... While I'm sure it's unlikely that Google would lose your data, I've heard enough horror stories of people being arbitrarily locked out of their accounts and having to jump through hoops to regain access. Then there's always the possibility of a software error or glitch that might cause certain files to be lost, especially if you're tying third-party tools into a cloud-service (something that's especially common for many Google Drive users).

To the original point, while I'd certainly hope that if Google decided to start enforcing the 1TB limit they'd do it in a "nice" way, they'd arguably be well within their rights to just cut off everything uploaded after the 1TB limit was reached. While I strongly doubt such an extreme scenario would ever happen, even blocking a user's account for exceeding the limit could be a huge inconvenience if they were relying on that for their cloud storage (picture a scenario where you've got a project due, but now you've got to spend the afternoon freeing up hundreds of gigabytes of space just so that you can upload and share your documents with your colleagues).

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I have seen that myself many times, but I don't believe I have ever lost anything stored in the cloud with a major provider like Microsoft, Google, or Apple.
Neither have I, to be fair — at least not through anything that wasn't on some level my own fault (e.g. an accidental local file deletion or corruption that got synced up to the cloud before I realized it). Of course, that's not a "cloud vs local" argument, but rather a case for keeping proper backups. IMHO, services like Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc, shouldn't be treated as backup services, since in most cases, you're syncing data, so if a local file gets deleted or corrupted, the cloud-based copy will as well. Any decent backup service — whether cloud-based or local — will help to mitigate this problem.

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On the other hand, hard drives and equipment fail all the time. I know of one organization that lost their entire email list because someone had the addresses stored on a single laptop that died. Of course, in an ideal world, we would all have multiple backups of everything happening automatically all the time. That might include several local backup copies and several cloud copies, but in reality most of us simply don't have the time or want to deal with all that hassle. And, doesn't Google have multiple redundant copies of everything in secured facilities with equipment and people monitoring everything?
Sure, but really the key word is exclusive copies.... I definitely rely heavily on both Google Drive and iCloud, but there's virtually nothing on either of those services that I don't also have a local copy of. Since most of them sync data anyway, that's kind of the default position for most users, but once you have many terabytes of data stored in Google Drive, there may be a temptation to save local disk space by removing local copies of at least some of your data. It just seems like a really good practice to at least have a local archive of anything important, even if it's on offline storage.

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Now, most of the people reading this will probably chime in and explain their detailed and very secure backup routines, but you are not the average person who just stores everything on a laptop and calls it a day.
Well, in all fairness if most users are simply syncing everything to a cloud service anyway, then you're not really relying on it exclusively, and I think that's rather the point..... the average person is going to install the Google Drive or Dropbox client, or simply switch on "Desktop and Documents" in iCloud, and carry on with their day. Unless you specifically play with the settings, you're going to have a cloud-based copy and a local copy of everything, so the chances of running into problems where you've lost access to something in the cloud are going to be minimal (remember, the average person is also equally likely to forget a password somewhere along the way ).

However, I still tell almost everybody I know that they should also keep backups of everything, and cloud-based sync solutions are not a backup service (for all of the reasons I noted above). I'm not even doing anything all that complicated for my backups — I subscribe to Backblaze for cloud-based backups and then use a local hard drive to do Time Machine backups. It's all completely automated and effortless, and nothing that the average person shouldn't be doing — in fact the only opposition I've ever encountered from friends, family, and clients in this area is a reluctance to spend the money on external hard drives or cloud-based backup services, but that ultimately comes down to the question of how much your data is worth to you.
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Old 16 Apr 2017, 01:54 AM   #9
TenFour
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in fact the only opposition I've ever encountered from friends, family, and clients in this area is a reluctance to spend the money on external hard drives or cloud-based backup services, but that ultimately comes down to the question of how much your data is worth to you.
Then you have different family and friends than I do! I can't even get my employer to invest in a proper backup system. My father has lost multiple computers over the past ten years due to one failure or another, and any sort of actual backup system or routine is beyond him--way too technical. Even if I set it up for him he would manage to disable it or change the settings within a day or two rendering it useless. For that matter, I have found my own backup systems require monitoring and periodically fail for one reason or another. For example, where I live the power and/or Internet go out regularly, requiring resetting of modems, relogging in, etc. In any case, this is why I think for many people the ideal is a Chromebook where your stuff is stored in the cloud and reasonably secure compared to the typical problems that befall local storage.
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Old 16 Apr 2017, 02:02 AM   #10
jhollington
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Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
Then you have different family and friends than I do! I can't even get my employer to invest in a proper backup system. My father has lost multiple computers over the past ten years due to one failure or another, and any sort of actual backup system or routine is beyond him--way too technical. Even if I set it up for him he would manage to disable it or change the settings within a day or two rendering it useless.
Well, I've reached the point where I recommend services like Backblaze to most friends and family that are on Windows. It's a recurring expense, but if your data isn't worth five bucks a month, then there's not much more to say about it.

Of course, I realize that's also a cloud service, but again my earlier point was about trusting the cloud exclusively — if you're using Backblaze, everything is still on your local computer, and if you're using Backblaze in addition to Google Drive, then you're covered on both ends.

For my friends who have Macs, I've had no problem convincing them to invest in something like a Time Capsule and simply flipping on the built-in Time Machine feature.

Quote:
In any case, this is why I think for many people the ideal is a Chromebook where your stuff is stored in the cloud and reasonably secure compared to the typical problems that befall local storage.
Sure, provided you always have access to a reliable Internet connection. That was the number one failing of a Chromebook for me.

Honestly, though, since most typical users will be syncing to services like Google Drive, I don't really see it as a problem for the average person. Your data is local, and your data is in the cloud. If you don't have an Internet connection, or forget your password and can't figure out how to reset it, at least that important project file isn't going to be rendered inaccessible to you two hours before it's due. Conversely, if your hard drive suddenly fails, you can find a web browser somewhere, log onto your cloud service, and you'll still have access to it. Adding something like Backblaze is really mostly just to prevent those "user error" situations that come up all the time with typical users who accidentally delete, corrupt, or misfile a document. The backup increases your chances of easily getting an old copy back, whereas that can be much more complicated with a cloud sync service, if it's even possible at all.
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Old 23 Apr 2017, 01:05 AM   #11
TenFour
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Back to the original question, new single users of G Suite are offered 30GB for $5 per month or 1TB for $10 per month. It is not easy to answer how to do anything with G Suite correctly. They have lots of online resources with written answers and you need to refer to them frequently. Frankly, that it is one thing I don't like about G Suite--it is not the easiest to do many things in the backend. I suppose once you have everything set up it operates about the same as the consumer, free version, but backend controls can be obscure. For example, I signed up for what I thought was going to be a Google hosted domain, but instead it was hosted by eNom. That wasn't clear to me from the various instructions I read. It is not the regular eNom portal you go to, and various domain settings and controls that you would normally expect to have are not available--or at least not apparent. Like, how do you get the code needed to move your domain off of eNom? Apparently you need to request one from Google somehow.
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