Dropbox Transfer • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#121

Post by qrv3w » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

gravitas wrote: post #102

Collected alternatives from the comments here: https://wetransfer.com/ https://swisstransfer.com/ https://transfer.midrive.io/ https://send.firefox.com/ https://transfer.sh/ ps: I really wish HN supported basic markdown so we can make bullet lists and other simple formatting controls, nothing wild like citation/footnote support just the top 5-10 markups. Trying to make a list of URLs to share looks like ass here.

If you are interested in self-hosting, there are a lot of options available too:

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#sin...

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#122

Post by geekamongus » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

Not sure how I feel that security is casually referenced as a passing thought on that page.

Compare it with something else, like Firefox Send, which puts security and privacy front-and-center in its description. https://send.firefox.com/

Why should I trust Dropbox Transfer over Firefox Send?

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#123

Post by maximente » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

i'm a huge fan of magic wormhole for simpler workflows (e.g. send some files in a dir within a local network). it's CLI based, so not for your average computer laborer but it's easy, secure, compact, and awesome for moving things around.

https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#124

Post by chrisseaton » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #78

When I saw this I thought, Finally, A Way to Transfer Large Files. But alas, it is only for small files, up to 100GB. And it gives no indication of using resumable and fault tolerant transfer. If you want to transfer a large amount of data (like backups or any big data collection, like a couple of years of RAW photos) via the cloud (e.g. because of NAT and firewalls) it is still better to rent a machine from Linode/D…

> And it gives no indication of using resumable ... transfer

Don’t you get that from HTTP?

And while I’m sure 100 GB is small for your domain whatever that is, surely you can’t be so unaware to know that this is going to be sufficient for the vast majority of consumers, businesses, and academics?

I don’t think I’ve ever handled a file that was 100 GB and I’m not a non-technical person.

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#125

Post by app4soft » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

gravitas wrote: post #102

Collected alternatives from the comments here: https://wetransfer.com/ https://swisstransfer.com/ https://transfer.midrive.io/ https://send.firefox.com/ https://transfer.sh/ ps: I really wish HN supported basic markdown so we can make bullet lists and other simple formatting controls, nothing wild like citation/footnote support just the top 5-10 markups. Trying to make a list of URLs to share looks like ass here.

- https://wetransfer.com/ - website UI & upload non-usable without JavaScript

- https://swisstransfer.com/ - website UI & upload non-usable without JavaScript

- https://transfer.midrive.io/ - website UI & upload non-usable without JavaScript

- https://send.firefox.com/ - website UI & upload non-usable without JavaScript

- https://transfer.sh/ - website UI & upload non-usable without JavaScript, BUT there are instructions on uploading using cURL or alias.

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#126

Post by angry_octet » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #124

angry_octet wrote: post #78

When I saw this I thought, Finally, A Way to Transfer Large Files. But alas, it is only for small files, up to 100GB. And it gives no indication of using resumable and fault tolerant transfer. If you want to transfer a large amount of data (like backups or any big data collection, like a couple of years of RAW photos) via the cloud (e.g. because of NAT and firewalls) it is still better to rent a machine from Linode/D…

> And it gives no indication of using resumable ... transfer Don’t you get that from HTTP? And while I’m sure 100 GB is small for your domain whatever that is, surely you can’t be so unaware to know that this is going to be sufficient for the vast majority of consumers, businesses, and academics? I don’t think I’ve ever handled a file that was 100 GB and I’m not a non-technical person.

Individual files sure but apart from sending one file there are many more transfer jobs. People can buy 4TB HDDs from their office supplies store, and the fastest way to transfer data remains putting it in the mail, not because of bandwidth but lack of services. Cloud backup is much cheaper than buying a tape array and administrator, but at present that is all you can do with it -- backup. You should easily be able to have TB of personal data in the cloud and send any file/directory, without worrying about how big it is.

Resumable transfers seem to fail a lot with http. Block level differencing (like dedup) can also make things a lot faster.

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#127

Post by dudus » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #93

angry_octet wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really seem good when Google has: $ 1.99 100GiB $ 2.99 200GiB $12.99 2000GiB

But doesn't google scan the files and use them for advertising and profiling you? Yeah I know you can encrypt the data, but my point still stands for "regular" users.

No. Google scans your file and index them so you can search them. No advertising profile is created based on content of your Google Drive.

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#128

Post by damontal » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #120

Causality1 wrote: post #92

I'm done with Dropbox. I spent years preaching the Dropbox gospel to my family and friends. When Dropbox decided to fuck their free users by limiting them to three devices I got over a dozen pissed-off phonecalls blaming me.

I would have asked them why they felt entitled to space, bandwidth, and computing power on someone else's computers.

Why offer it only to yank it?

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#129

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

damontal wrote: post #128

lotsofpulp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have asked them why they felt entitled to space, bandwidth, and computing power on someone else's computers.

Why offer it only to yank it?

I don't know what the offerer's motivations are, but I do know from experience that there's no reason to expect an indefinite supply of free stuff.

Re: Dropbox Transfer

#130

Post by tyingq » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #87

tobtoh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't surprise me - I had seriously considered subscribing to Dropbox many times, but the price was just too high for my needs. When they forced me to make a decision (by enforcing the 3 client rule), I evaluated the costs/benefits and ended up going with OneDrive - cheaper overall and I got Office 365. I much prefer Dropbox's sync technology, but not at double the price.

What's baffling to me is that OneDrive already has the same technology as Dropbox (block-level syncing instead of the more common file-level syncing), but they have arbitrarily only turned it on for Microsoft filetype extensions (mostly Microsoft Office files). If they enabled it for all filetypes I'd switch over tomorrow.

Supposedly, that was coming in 2019:

"Differential sync brings the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file. This makes the file synchronization process faster for these files. Currently OneDrive supports differential sync for Office 2016 files. Later this year, Microsoft will bring the ability to leverage differential sync to all file types stored in OneDrive and SharePoint."

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-announce-onedrive-improvem...

Edit: It went live on November 4th 2019:

"To complement these large uploads, we announced availability of differential sync for PC and Mac, bringing the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file."

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-OneDrive-Bl...