I’m fairly new to self-hosting and privacy. I used to be all about Apple. I scanned all my important documents and stored them in iCloud. That worked pretty well, but because I tend to make my life harder than necessary, I switched from an iPhone to a Pixel with GrapheneOS. It’s a hassle, but I’m happy with my decision overall. Unfortunately, my files are still in iCloud. As a Mac user, that’s not too bad, but not being able to access my files on the go is annoying.
I’m afraid to store all my important files in an LXC on my Proxmox server, even with daily backups.
Should I switch from iCloud to Nextcloud, Proton, or something similar? Or should I create an offsite backup—one encrypted in the cloud and one in my house? How are others handling this? Would an extra backup at a family member’s house be a good idea? Is paying for cloud storage common? I’d really appreciate any suggestions or ideas. Right now, I’m feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities. Also, having 2 TB of iCloud storage made it too easy, since I didn’t carefully choose the files to upload. But paying 10 bucks a month feels a little stupid now that I don’t have the comfort factor any more.
I have Paperless on home server and I am backing up offsite to StorJ (encrypted). I have it on TrueNAS that have native support for StorJ so its as easy as setting credentials and and filling a few form fields. I back up all of my non-media data there and it costs me less than 5 bucks per month. I realize you have different setup, this is just an example what I do. You can still spin up Paperless in LXC and make sure you back up to some offsite storage. You mention Proton Drive, that is another option if you really just need storage. They have data redundancy so the chance you will loose your data is virtually zero. Make sure you have recovery email though, if you forget your password no one can help you if you don’t have recovery email.