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I think we need a better storage backup system. I've got data on iCloud and on multiple desktops and laptops. My iCloud doesn't have all the photos because I'd

by yeukhon 10y ago

I think we need a better storage backup system. I've got data on iCloud and on multiple desktops and laptops. My iCloud doesn't have all the photos because I'd run out of space and be paying dozens of dollars monthly [1]. I was helping my friend to select a disk backup solution a while ago, and not that many really came to my likings. Backblaze[2] is probably the only one I would say pretty good for a monthly backup fee at $5. Dropbox's 1TB was enough for her so I went with that solution, but for my use case I won't be able to benefit from it. Amazon [3] also has a backup offering product, but I don't see any real attractions / news since its launch. I did some work with Box.com and APIs weren't so easy to use (this was back in late 2015, early 2016) and pricing wasn't very competitive for a home user. S3 would be an ideal backup but I'd need to code up the system to manage revision and life cycle, that becomes a job which I might as well create my own Dropbox... Sync storage is very important when you have a media center PC and a bunch of PCs you own and needs the files around. Not just in the cloud (that's for on-the-go and DR), but I would want a local copy too (using a NAS server). So if Dropbox offers local backup + cloud backup at a reasonable monthly / annual price, I would give that a try. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 [2]: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html [3]: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home

robbiemitchell 10y ago
It's $20/month for unlimited storage on Dropbox.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Yes, but for my friend who is a low-income earner, $20 is difficult for her, so we just went with a one-time investment going with a separate HD and using the free Dropbox tier until she outgrows the storage space.
  - srtjstjsj 10y ago
    Dropbox is remote backup and cloud storage. It solves a rather different (larger) problem from a local backup.
- Strom 10y ago
  Is this a hidden plan? The cheapest unlimited plan I see right now on their website is 54€/month, which is the advanced business plan for 3 users. Even if I take the annual plan and divide the price by 12 it's 45€/month. Also these prices don't include VAT, while the personal plans do. Perhaps you were unaware that the business plans can't be bought for a single user?
  - robbiemitchell 10y ago
    I stand corrected, I was not aware there is a 3-license minimum. Neither the pricing page nor the plan comparison page make this clear. You have to click into the business section to actually see that. Super annoying.
- ac29 10y ago
  Does anything stop you from uploading 10s or 100s of TB? I recently crossed 1TB of storage use on S3 (which costs around $20/month) and am in the process of exploring alternatives. I've never really understood how companies can offer "unlimited" storage at low prices.
  - crooked-v 10y ago
    "Unlimited" space in any online service almost always means "there is a soft cap where we start threatening to shut down your service, but we won't tell you what it is ahead of time".
    - yeukhon 10y ago
      Actually quite an interesting point. Consider S3. They provide unlimited storage, but their software has to be able to keep up with the insane growth of data, albeit the hardware storage demand as well.
      - 013a 10y ago
        S3's cost to the consumer scales with the amount stored. That's different from Amazon, Dropbox, or Google, who offer enterprise-facing non-developer storage options at a flat rate for "unlimited". They can do this because these enterprise-facing products offer fewer performance guarantees relative to their developer-facing products. But, ultimately, "unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited, in literally all of these products.
        yeukhon 10y ago
        I would think enterprise offering would have a stricter SLA than developer-facing product. The only thing between Dropbox and Amazon is that there is no independent enterprise offering for S3, except Amazon pays a penalty for violating said SLA.
      - nkristoffersen 10y ago
        You still pay per TB. So yes, if you pay, you can have "unlimited" storage.
- Scarbutt 10y ago
  AFAICT only if you buy 3 licenses minimum.
  - akurilin 10y ago
    That's a bummer. I have a sizeable chunk of raw image files I'd love to back up somewhere without having to have it on my machine, Dropbox would be a good fit if it wasn't for the 1TB limit on individuals. Ended up uploading directly to S3 and archiving to Glacier.
    - dublinben 10y ago
      Amazon Prime Photos allows unlimited photo storage (RAW included) with any $100/yr subscription to Amazon Prime. If you're already paying this for the other benefits, then it is free.
      - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 10y ago
        At the risk of "ruining" it for some users, Amazon doesn't appear to validate nor re-compress uploaded images. I uploaded some bits from /dev/random as a .png, and it counted towards photo storage, and I got the same bits back re-downloading the test file. So you don't even have to resort to stuffing metadata or steganography. For the record, I don't exploit this loophole and only tested to satisfy my curiosity. At $60/yr. it's already very cheap for unlimited -- it's my tertiary backup so I'll accept the risk that "unlimited" is qualified -- generic file storage.
  - robbiemitchell 10y ago
    Correct, didn't realize that, thanks for pointing out.
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  As others have pointed out, I was not aware there is a 3-license minimum. Neither the pricing page nor the plan comparison page state this minimum. You have to click into the business section to actually see that.
JetSpiegel 10y ago
> Not just in the cloud (that's for on-the-go and DR), but I would want a local copy too (using a NAS server). Syncthing with a node on the NAS, and then use Duply to backup to the cloud. There's clients for everything, and you can keep history too.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Yes, that's possible, but I was indicating that if Dropbox would move into a full backup business it would be a big move and might worth consider.
projproj 10y ago
>S3 would be an ideal backup but I'd need to code up the system to manage revision and life cycle, that becomes a job which I might as well create my own Dropbox... Might be worth looking into Duplicati [1]. You choose the backend, and it does the other things you mention ("Backup files and folders with strong AES-256 encryption. Save space with incremental backups and data deduplication. Run backups on any machine through the web-based interface or via command line interface. Duplicati has a built-in scheduler and auto-updater.") [1]: https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/
maverick_iceman 10y ago
Try Google Drive and Google Photos. Google Photos offer unlimited space for high-res photos.
- chappi42 10y ago
  Dropbox won't analyse and sell you left and right. You cannot compare these two services. One is a service, one is an ad machine.
  - cwyers 10y ago
    Okay, but that's the sort of tradeoff you have to make when you you won't pay freight on things. Backup is basically a solved problem, you just have to pay for it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
krrrh 10y ago
Arq is a well-supported piece of commercial software. It's a one time $50 license, but works with a half dozen different cloud services. Another commenter mentioned the open source Duplicati, which sounds similar. I haven't looked into it, but probably would if I wasn't already set up with a decent solution. Folks often end up with a tonne of excess space either on a paid Dropbox account, or Google Suite via their university or company. You can also get unlimited space on ACD for $60/a (some people on /r/datahoarder claim to have uploaded over a petabyte), and Glacier is quite affordable on a per GB basis. It's pretty easy to get reliable versioned encrypted cloud backups on different providers that run overnight without requiring a lot of attention from an end user. The biggest gap I have left is that most of my photos are on iCloud and if you don't have space on your Mac to store local copies to back up to somewhere else, it's easy to end up with only one copy of vital data.
standan 10y ago
You could go with something like https://www.cloudfuze.com/ https://www.cloudfuze.com/ But then you would end up paying 5$ a month. It gives you the freedom to choose the storage provider or multiple of them transparently.

by yeukhon 10y ago

robbiemitchell 10y ago

It's $20/month for unlimited storage on Dropbox.

yeukhon 10y ago
Yes, but for my friend who is a low-income earner, $20 is difficult for her, so we just went with a one-time investment going with a separate HD and using the free Dropbox tier until she outgrows the storage space.
- srtjstjsj 10y ago
  Dropbox is remote backup and cloud storage. It solves a rather different (larger) problem from a local backup.
Strom 10y ago
Is this a hidden plan? The cheapest unlimited plan I see right now on their website is 54€/month, which is the advanced business plan for 3 users. Even if I take the annual plan and divide the price by 12 it's 45€/month. Also these prices don't include VAT, while the personal plans do. Perhaps you were unaware that the business plans can't be bought for a single user?
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  I stand corrected, I was not aware there is a 3-license minimum. Neither the pricing page nor the plan comparison page make this clear. You have to click into the business section to actually see that. Super annoying.
ac29 10y ago
Does anything stop you from uploading 10s or 100s of TB? I recently crossed 1TB of storage use on S3 (which costs around $20/month) and am in the process of exploring alternatives. I've never really understood how companies can offer "unlimited" storage at low prices.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  "Unlimited" space in any online service almost always means "there is a soft cap where we start threatening to shut down your service, but we won't tell you what it is ahead of time".
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    Actually quite an interesting point. Consider S3. They provide unlimited storage, but their software has to be able to keep up with the insane growth of data, albeit the hardware storage demand as well.
    - 013a 10y ago
      S3's cost to the consumer scales with the amount stored. That's different from Amazon, Dropbox, or Google, who offer enterprise-facing non-developer storage options at a flat rate for "unlimited". They can do this because these enterprise-facing products offer fewer performance guarantees relative to their developer-facing products. But, ultimately, "unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited, in literally all of these products.
      - yeukhon 10y ago
        I would think enterprise offering would have a stricter SLA than developer-facing product. The only thing between Dropbox and Amazon is that there is no independent enterprise offering for S3, except Amazon pays a penalty for violating said SLA.
    - nkristoffersen 10y ago
      You still pay per TB. So yes, if you pay, you can have "unlimited" storage.
Scarbutt 10y ago
AFAICT only if you buy 3 licenses minimum.
- akurilin 10y ago
  That's a bummer. I have a sizeable chunk of raw image files I'd love to back up somewhere without having to have it on my machine, Dropbox would be a good fit if it wasn't for the 1TB limit on individuals. Ended up uploading directly to S3 and archiving to Glacier.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    Amazon Prime Photos allows unlimited photo storage (RAW included) with any $100/yr subscription to Amazon Prime. If you're already paying this for the other benefits, then it is free.
    - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 10y ago
      At the risk of "ruining" it for some users, Amazon doesn't appear to validate nor re-compress uploaded images. I uploaded some bits from /dev/random as a .png, and it counted towards photo storage, and I got the same bits back re-downloading the test file. So you don't even have to resort to stuffing metadata or steganography. For the record, I don't exploit this loophole and only tested to satisfy my curiosity. At $60/yr. it's already very cheap for unlimited -- it's my tertiary backup so I'll accept the risk that "unlimited" is qualified -- generic file storage.
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  Correct, didn't realize that, thanks for pointing out.
robbiemitchell 10y ago
As others have pointed out, I was not aware there is a 3-license minimum. Neither the pricing page nor the plan comparison page state this minimum. You have to click into the business section to actually see that.

JetSpiegel 10y ago

> Not just in the cloud (that's for on-the-go and DR), but I would want a local copy too (using a NAS server). Syncthing with a node on the NAS, and then use Duply to backup to the cloud. There's clients for everything, and you can keep history too.

yeukhon 10y ago
Yes, that's possible, but I was indicating that if Dropbox would move into a full backup business it would be a big move and might worth consider.

projproj 10y ago

>S3 would be an ideal backup but I'd need to code up the system to manage revision and life cycle, that becomes a job which I might as well create my own Dropbox... Might be worth looking into Duplicati [1]. You choose the backend, and it does the other things you mention ("Backup files and folders with strong AES-256 encryption. Save space with incremental backups and data deduplication. Run backups on any machine through the web-based interface or via command line interface. Duplicati has a built-in scheduler and auto-updater.") [1]: https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/

maverick_iceman 10y ago

Try Google Drive and Google Photos. Google Photos offer unlimited space for high-res photos.

chappi42 10y ago
Dropbox won't analyse and sell you left and right. You cannot compare these two services. One is a service, one is an ad machine.
- cwyers 10y ago
  Okay, but that's the sort of tradeoff you have to make when you you won't pay freight on things. Backup is basically a solved problem, you just have to pay for it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

krrrh 10y ago

Arq is a well-supported piece of commercial software. It's a one time $50 license, but works with a half dozen different cloud services. Another commenter mentioned the open source Duplicati, which sounds similar. I haven't looked into it, but probably would if I wasn't already set up with a decent solution. Folks often end up with a tonne of excess space either on a paid Dropbox account, or Google Suite via their university or company. You can also get unlimited space on ACD for $60/a (some people on /r/datahoarder claim to have uploaded over a petabyte), and Glacier is quite affordable on a per GB basis. It's pretty easy to get reliable versioned encrypted cloud backups on different providers that run overnight without requiring a lot of attention from an end user. The biggest gap I have left is that most of my photos are on iCloud and if you don't have space on your Mac to store local copies to back up to somewhere else, it's easy to end up with only one copy of vital data.

standan 10y ago

You could go with something like https://www.cloudfuze.com/ https://www.cloudfuze.com/ But then you would end up paying 5$ a month. It gives you the freedom to choose the storage provider or multiple of them transparently.