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Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

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Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#81
post #77
post #3

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

Yes, notably, the File Provider extension is where the value is for me. Are there any open source options other than Seafile's SeaDrive?

NextCloud has a version with FP support

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#83
post #3

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

https://syncthing.net/ Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast). No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync! (not affiliated, just really love the software)

The only issue I have, with this amazing piece of software that I heavily use across multiple devices, is management of sync failures and exclusions via the UI. I have been using it for long enough to know the tips and tricks but it would be great for the web UI to allow easy management of conflict issues and the ability to mark files/folders as exclusions in a friendly manner.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#84
post #78

I bought 35$/mo 16TB server from OVH. I am running 2 replicas of Garage, one on this server. I am using this for backup for now but probably I will also move my Nextcloud files there and websites. This is fine for now and less pricey than any S3 provider I was able to find.

Mind sharing the reference of the server? I would have considered it when rebuilding my media infra but haven't seen anything close to this

I was fishing for nice price for server like that for few months. To be true I saw something similar but even cheaper last year and I should buy then for 20$, but thought that I do not need it. Now those servers are more like 60$/mo.

It was something like that. https://www.kimsufi.com/pl/?range=kimsufi&storage=12000%7C11...

As you can see price is 180% of that now for bit more storage.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#85
post #3

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

https://syncthing.net/ Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast). No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync! (not affiliated, just really love the software)

Sadly it doesn't have a great official solution for mobile devices.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#86
post #3

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

> but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced

Which mobile OS would that be?

The big reason I stopped being excited about cloud storage is that on mobile, from what I can tell, none of the major providers care about "folder that syncs" experience. You only get an app that lets you view remote storage. The only proper "folder that syncs" I had working on my phone so far was provided via Syncthing, but maintaining that turned out to be more effort than my tiny attention span can afford these days.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#87
post #3

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced. So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

> but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced Which mobile OS would that be? The big reason I stopped being excited about cloud storage is that on mobile, from what I can tell, none of the major providers care about "folder that syncs" experience. You only get an app that lets you view remote storage. The o…

I'm using iOS and macOS. On macOS I have the folder that syncs experience (I'm using Synology Drive, but Dropbox works the same way), on iOS I have the "browse remote files" experience but I can pin files I always want to keep available which is what I want.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#88
post #23

I bought 35$/mo 16TB server from OVH. I am running 2 replicas of Garage, one on this server. I am using this for backup for now but probably I will also move my Nextcloud files there and websites. This is fine for now and less pricey than any S3 provider I was able to find.

Honest question, what do you need/use 16TB for? 4K video?

I already am using almost 4tb just for backup. 2TB for all of my files in NAS. As I wrote above I will most probably move my Nextcloud instance storage there so I will be already using 6TB of storage. With built-in instant replication between nodes in garage I should have instant backup of my files.

Right now I do not have time, but it would be nice to move storage all of my services there so in case of trouble with one server I could instantly spin them up on other machine by mounting S3 storage. Performance probably wont be great but if main machine will go down I will be still able to use my home automation for example on some secondary without much of a hassle.

Anyway having dedicated server and backup storage for 30$/mo does not seem unreasonable.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#89
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what do you need/use 16TB for? 4K video?

Lots of files with 2160p.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.DV.HDR.H.265-FLUX[TGx] in the name.

No, incremental backups of few machines for few years takes a lot of space.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#90

We've officially come full circle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.

I love Dropbox, I pay annually. I use the open source client https://maestral.app/ on the Mac for workstation use, but also integrate other systems with my Dropbox account using their API. If someone built an open source Dropbox server that sat on top of S3 compatible storage, I would not only use it, but pay to have that optionality to get out of Dropbox if they ever enshittify. I can recognize form and function worth paying for ("value"), but still want an exit plan. It's not about the spend, it is about data sovereignty. This is colloquially referred to as “vendor and third party risk management.”
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