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Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

mitjafelicijan.com

181–190 of 201 posts

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#181
post #39

There is a lot of open source file sync software out there (ownCloud, NextCloud, Seafile, Syncthing, ...) that would be much better suited for a self-hosted Dropbox replacement than a single bash script. You are many orders of magnitude more likely to lose your data due to a code bug or unstable network than deplatforming. I looked into setting up something of the sort for myself a little while ago, but unfortunately…

Wasabi is S3 compatible storage and costs $6/TB per month.

NextCloud and ownCloud can be set up to utilize Amazon S3 or Wasabi storage. This works really well and is very inexpensive. Both my GFs business files and my personal/work files all are backed up Dropbox style for less then $10 a month including web and mobile access.

I found NextCloud a little buggy compared to OwnCloud but it has more features and unfortunately I'm stuck with it for the time being and can't easily switch back to NextCloud. The sync works fine though.

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#182

Funny, I've done the opposite in recent months. Dropbox's killer feature is 'Online-only' storage IMHO, it allows me to store and access 300GB+ of music and other projects on my laptop without carrying an external HDD with me all the time. Every file is saved as a zero-byte file, which makes the files discoverable even though it's not stored on my disk. When I try to open the file it downloads it automatically, which…

Love how well Dropbox works. Sadly, for me, it is too expensive. It is 240 euros per year for a family of 6. For comparison, the same plan in Google One costs 120 euros per year. Same for Office 365. If they did 120 euros per year for the family pack I will migrate to them because I like Dropbox better at syncing.

(And Office365 actually gives you 1TB per user (so 6TB) and 60 mins of skype per user (so 360 mins), plus online, mobile, and desktop versions of office).

But somehow I have the feeling that Dropbox > Google Drive > OneDrive at syncing. Anybody can confirm?

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#183
post #13

You wrote about deplatforming-- heads up that DigitalOcean does deplatform people. I have direct firsthand knowledge of DigitalOcean deplatforming a security disclosure professional reporting a root breach bug. For your secure backups, I can suggest Tarsnap by Colin Percival, who's a security expert and a frequent contributor on Hacker News. I don't get anything for recommending Tarsnap; I'm just a customer. https://…

Colin Percival is obviously a smart and very skilled guy but I am mystified why people on HN keep recommending tarsnap, it seems a terrible product for almost any imaginable audience.

If I'm a normal end user, I will probably get a vastly easier to use product at about 1-10% of the price from Backblaze. And if I'm a serious business that can easily afford the > 10x premium and engineering to configure the backup I probably wouldn't want to entrust it to some company with what looks to be a bus factor of one and the apparent technical limitation that a restore might cost me a few DAYS of unanticipated downtime [1].

I mean, sure, if you are some unix nerd wanting to backup your dotfiles and a few small documents (or repos) for maybe around ~$50/year, why not go with some artisanal backup service for HN street cred (and a laudable open source donation policy)? But what other good use cases are there?

Am I missing something obvious?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25621093

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#184
post #39

There is a lot of open source file sync software out there (ownCloud, NextCloud, Seafile, Syncthing, ...) that would be much better suited for a self-hosted Dropbox replacement than a single bash script. You are many orders of magnitude more likely to lose your data due to a code bug or unstable network than deplatforming. I looked into setting up something of the sort for myself a little while ago, but unfortunately…

Wasabi is S3 compatible storage and costs $6/TB per month. NextCloud and ownCloud can be set up to utilize Amazon S3 or Wasabi storage. This works really well and is very inexpensive. Both my GFs business files and my personal/work files all are backed up Dropbox style for less then $10 a month including web and mobile access. I found NextCloud a little buggy compared to OwnCloud but it has more features and unfortun…

My little nitpick: Wasabi has that 90 days minimum storage policy.

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other committer is his brother.

Does it matter?

Looks like the brother just does the merges? (which are mostly automatic) so IMO best it matters because it's still mostly a one man, or at least a one family operation - i.e not very resilient to random acts of nature (which backups are supposed to protect from)

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#186
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think hetzner is about half an expensive (€8 tb/m) What offering is that? Their "storage" page quotes 26 euros for 5TB.

The BX30 in 7.90 before any country specific tax. But that is the 1tb price as the price per TB is discounted by volume (and you get more snapshots, etc.)

Okay I see now. If you switch VAT region to us and get the biggest size, it works out to 3.9 euro per TB per month.

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#187
post #20

I wouldn't trust that script too much: there is no error checking at all. What happens when s3cmd fails and after two months you discover the "Vault sync succeded" emails you have been getting were all illusory? If the author is reading: please take the time to update your example, including proper error checking (at least "set -eu"), otherwise the people on the internet that are going to copy your script are in for…

Whyyyyyy? Just use rclone.

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#188
post #183
post #13

You wrote about deplatforming-- heads up that DigitalOcean does deplatform people. I have direct firsthand knowledge of DigitalOcean deplatforming a security disclosure professional reporting a root breach bug. For your secure backups, I can suggest Tarsnap by Colin Percival, who's a security expert and a frequent contributor on Hacker News. I don't get anything for recommending Tarsnap; I'm just a customer. https://…

Colin Percival is obviously a smart and very skilled guy but I am mystified why people on HN keep recommending tarsnap, it seems a terrible product for almost any imaginable audience. If I'm a normal end user, I will probably get a vastly easier to use product at about 1-10% of the price from Backblaze. And if I'm a serious business that can easily afford the > 10x premium and engineering to configure the backup I pr…

E.g. relative to the author's script, tarsnap get you automatic deduplication across backups... which, if you're like me and basically generate more and more data, allows you to store lots of historic backups at basically no overhead over just storing today's data.

Also, good encryption and security; e.g. Tarsnap is trusted by Stripe (https://www.tarsnap.com/testimonials.html).

Tarsnap does have real downsides - restores can indeed be slow, bare per-GB cost is high, and "like tar" is not a user interface that everyone will like - but there are definitely upsides, too.

Re: Replacing Dropbox in favor of DigitalOcean spaces

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of an instance, you could just rent a dedicated server with some mirrored TB of drives. For example, https://www.server4you.com/dedicated-server has 2x 2TB for $25/mo in St. Louis, MO and unmetered bandwidth. OVH Cloud in the U.S. has servers with 32GB of RAM and also 2x2TB drives starting at $59/mo and unmetered bandwidth. (both of these are French companies that are expanding into the U.S.) If you are inter…

> For example, https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml currently has 500GB hard drive servers with Intel Atoms available for $5/mo in both Canada ... It says “currently being replenished” for the 2 lowest price packages in Canada

I missed out on that deal too. Guess things get hit quickly when put on HN!
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