Why the region your files live in matters

“The cloud” is a comforting phrase, but your files are not in a cloud. They are on disks in a building with an address. Which building matters more than most people think, and it matters in three quite different ways: how fast your files feel, which laws apply to them, and who can be ordered to produce them.

This article is for ordinary people and small businesses, not compliance officers. If you have a compliance officer, listen to them instead.

Speed: distance is still distance

Data moves fast, but not instantly. A file stored on the other side of the planet has to cross that distance every time you open it. For a small PDF you will not notice. For a 2 GB video preview, a 500-photo folder loading thumbnails, or a 5 GB upload, you will.

The rough rule is that each thousand kilometres adds a small but real delay to every request, and a file manager makes a lot of requests. Someone in Manchester using a drive in Singapore will find everything slightly sluggish in a way they cannot quite put their finger on. The same person using a drive in London will not think about it at all.

So the first and simplest rule: store files near the people who use them most. If that is you, pick the region nearest you. If it is your clients, pick the region nearest them.

Law: your files are subject to the rules of where they sit

This is the part that catches people out. Data stored in a country is generally subject to that country’s laws, regardless of where you live or where the storage company is headquartered.

Some practical consequences:

• Privacy regulation. If you handle personal information about people in the UK or the EU, the data protection rules in those places care about where that information is stored and whether it leaves the region. Keeping UK client files in a UK region, or EU files in an EU region, removes a whole category of questions you would otherwise have to answer.
• Sector rules. Some professions have their own expectations. Accountants, solicitors, therapists, medical practices and anyone doing government work are often told, formally or informally, to keep records in-country. Canadian public bodies, for instance, frequently require Canadian storage.
• Contracts. Your clients may simply have written it into their terms. “Supplier will store Customer data within the European Economic Area” is a common line, and it is binding on you whether or not you read it.

None of this means storing files abroad is illegal. It usually is not. It means that storing them at home is almost always the simpler position to be in.

Access: who can be compelled

Governments can order companies operating in their territory to hand over data. The details differ by country, and there is a long, unresolved argument about whether a company can be forced to hand over data it stores in another country. You do not need to follow that argument. You need to know that the fewer jurisdictions your files touch, the fewer sets of authorities have an obvious claim on them.

For most people this is a theoretical concern. For a journalist, a lawyer, an activist or a business holding a competitor’s confidential information under NDA, it is not theoretical at all. If you are in that group, keep the data in the jurisdiction whose rules you understand and have some recourse under.

How Onlinedrive handles regions

Onlinedrive runs six regions: US West (Los Angeles), US East (Virginia), Canada (Montreal), United Kingdom (London), Europe (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Singapore). You choose one when you create a drive account, and files uploaded to that drive stay in that region. They are not replicated across borders behind your back.

Each drive account belongs to exactly one region. If you need files in two regions, you hold two drive accounts. This is deliberate. A customer with UK clients and Canadian clients can keep two separate drives and never have to wonder which side of the Atlantic a particular folder ended up on.

Choosing: a short decision list

Work down this list and stop at the first line that applies.

1. A client, regulator or contract tells you where data must live. Pick that region. Done.
2. You store other people’s personal information for work. Pick the region where most of those people are. UK clients, London. German or French clients, Frankfurt. Canadian clients, Montreal.
3. You are an individual storing your own things. Pick the region closest to where you live. Speed is the only factor that matters.
4. You travel constantly or your team is spread out. Pick the region closest to where the largest files are uploaded from, since uploads are where distance hurts most.

If two regions seem equally sensible, choose the one in your own country. It is the easiest position to explain later.

Common misunderstandings

“The company is based in country X, so my data is governed by X.” Not necessarily. The storage location matters independently of where the company is incorporated. A drive in Frankfurt is in Germany, whatever the company letterhead says.

“If I pick Europe my files will be slow in the US.” Yes, somewhat. That is the trade-off. If speed in the US matters more than the legal position, pick a US region. If you need both, use two drives.

“I can change region later.” With Onlinedrive, a drive’s region is fixed. You can create a new drive in another region and move files across, but it is a move, not a switch. Deciding carefully at the start is less work.

“Encryption means location does not matter.” Encryption at rest and in transit protects against someone reading the disks or intercepting traffic. It does not change which laws apply or which authorities have jurisdiction. Both matter; they are different protections.

A worked example

A freelance bookkeeper in Bristol has about thirty clients, all UK small businesses. She stores their invoices, bank statements and year-end files. Her clients’ data is personal and financial. The choice is obvious: United Kingdom (London). Her engagement letter can say truthfully that client records are stored in the UK, her files load quickly, and if a client asks “where is my data”, the answer is one word.

Her brother runs a small video production company in Vancouver with clients across Canada and the US. He uploads very large files and his clients download them. His main concern is upload speed from Vancouver, so he picks US West (Los Angeles), which is the closest region to him. If a Canadian government client later insists on Canadian storage, he opens a second drive in Montreal for that client’s work alone.

Neither of them needed a lawyer. They needed five minutes of honest thought about who their data is about and where those people are.

Next step

Before you sign up for any cloud storage, write down the answer to one question: whose information is this, and where are they? Then pick the region that matches. If you are starting with Onlinedrive, the region selector is the first choice on the registration page, and the knowledge base has the specifics on each region.