Data Transfer from external HDD to the cloud.

@theinfiniteenigma-8278 Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform!

Firstly, let me explain: How data is copied and saved in Azure Storage and what all feature, benefits and services provided. How you can access the data globally with all security aspects , Later you can choose which which azure storage service is required based on your requirement.

There are different tools to transfer data to cloud: This article provides an overview of some of the common Azure data transfer solutions. This article also links out to recommended options depending on the network bandwidth in your environment and the size of the data you intend to transfer.

There are several options for transferring data to and from Azure, depending on your needs:https://zcusa.951200.xyz/en-us/azure/architecture/data-guide/scenarios/data-transfer

I would recommended to use Azcopy tool( There is video which provides complete detailed information, how to use the tool) or Azure Storage Explorer service in your scenario for data transfer

• You can you Azure Blob Storage or Azure Files Storage based on your requirement.

Azure Blob storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data.

1. Blob storage is ideal for:
2. Serving images or documents directly to a browser.
3. Storing files for distributed access.
4. Streaming video and audio.
5. Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
6. Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.
7. Objects in Blob storage can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS. Users or client applications can access blobs via URLs, the Azure Storage REST API, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, or an Azure Storage client library. The storage client libraries are available for multiple languages, including .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby.

For more information about Blob storage, see Introduction to Blob storage.

• Azure Files: Offers fully managed cloud file shares that you can access from anywhere via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. You can mount Azure file shares from cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS.

You want to "lift and shift" an application to the cloud that already uses the native file system APIs to share data between it and other applications running in Azure. You want to replace or supplement on-premises file servers or NAS devices. You want to store development and debugging tools that need to be accessed from many virtual machines.

For more information about Azure Files, see Introduction to Azure Files.

Hope this helps!
Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

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