if you're using a respectable cloud service, the chances of getting hacked are close to 0. but yes, i wouldn't really trust putting sensitive files onto the internet anyway- i'd store those offline on multiple backups. but for school files and general other stuff, cloud service is way better than a usb.

i mean, you could just argue "what if someone stole your usb? perhaps remote, but not 100% impossible". same difference.

anyway, your usb or external hdd is much more likely to crash or go bust than any cloud storage. in fact, "cloud storage becoming corrupted" just doesn't make sense. plus you have to manually back it up compared to using a cloud service like google's where it auto-back ups whatever folders you assign.

I guess I meant more if there was an outage or the servers went down or crashed?  Honestly I don't know a lot about it. 

I guess I meant more if there was an outage or the servers went down or crashed?  Honestly I don't know a lot about it. 

Valid concerns!
Cloud servers often have mirrors and backup servers to mitigate possible down-time. There is, apparently, a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Google Drive, for example, has been around for 8 years and has only gone down a dozen times or so... and for several of those occasions only for 5 minutes or so. When the outages are fixed, access to your files are restored. Insofar as I'm aware, files have as of yet never been lost by the hosting system.

 Also, most cloud drive hosts allows you to sync files onto other computers, so if you're worried about losing access to files, you can always keep self-updating copies on the classroom computers.

Yep.
Always have offline filler activities in hand!

A cloud service such as Google Drive or Dropbox are not backups but rather sync services.  I wish they would be more upfront about this.

what is the difference

yeah i thought you could just choose whether you want that to happen or not. i used to use google drive as a backup before i discovered you could sync it too

Good thing I put everything onto my computer and burn onto a DVD

uhh

true, but i'd be more worried about my school internet going down than the cloud servers, which happens more than it should :/ so i guess that could be a potential issue if you need to access your files

what is the difference

A service  like BackBlaze or CrashPlan is more designed to have a separate offsite backup.  Services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and others are designed to keep files synced up. Although it is possible, you generally don’t use BackBlaze to retrieve files though they do have an apps to do that.  If there is an error in syncing (as apparently often happens in iCloud), then some of your files could be lost.  I suppose some problem could with BackBlaze, but it seems less likely.  I am sure Google and Dropbox have great security and redundancy, but they still are big targets.  Syncing up files seems to introduce more points of failures.  Even with Dropbox, the one I believe to be the most reliable, I have had a few sync errors though I was admittedly able to figure out what the problem was pretty easily (conflicts between files edited while offline or with bad internet connectivity).

Also, when you use BackBlaze there doesn’t seem to be a limit on storage.  I have no idea how many terabytes of family videos and the like backed up on Backblaze along with on-site backups.  I used to carry SLRs around all the time and now 4k video takes a lot of space.

Even if don’t use the services, if you want to learn more about what the good hard drives are, cloud backup storage companies can provide good data.  They use tons of hard drives and they have released information about failing hard drives in the past, so you can learn which ones to buy or avoid.

So you can use it to back up your work stuff and personal life.  It all depends on how much data you have.  I like having and on-site backup and an off-site backup.  If you don’t have a lot of stuff to backup or it is not as personal, it might not matter as much.

I forgot: I am not sure about Korea, but in some countries they will also send you hard drives with your data if you have a lot of stuff, so it doesn’t take 100 years to download your files.  You just send it back when you are done.

A voice recorder.  Anyone that records your voice clearer is good enough but it is even if it includes a time stamp for the file names and transcribes voice to text reasonably well.  It doesn’t have to transcribe perfectly.  Just enough so you can get the gist of the message in case you want to reference what you are looking for later that day.  One should be easy to find to suit one’s needs on any modern phone.

A voice recorder is useful when you don’t have much time to write things down such as a busy time schedule.