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I personally run syncthing on several devices, and don't worry about the cloud. It's self-hosted, devices replicate files between themselves, and there's no rea

I personally run syncthing on several devices, and don't worry about the cloud. It's self-hosted, devices replicate files between themselves, and there's no real limit other than hard drive space. It runs on just about anything too; several of my backup systems are Raspberry Pis. It can be a bit weird to set up initially, and is a lot less magical in the interest of putting you in control for privacy reasons, but the flexibility added is pretty useful. I have a music folder that I sync to my phone without needing to pull the rest of my backups along with it, since they wouldn't fit anyway. Several of my larger folders aren't backed up on every single device for similar reasons, but some of my really important smaller folders (documents, photos, regular backups of my website's database) go on everything just because it can. Anyway, check it out. Highly recommended all around: https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/

lewisl9029 9y ago
I've moved mostly to syncing through Syncthing for my devices too, but I'm curious what people use for sharing files with others and accessing files through a browser on machines you don't control?
Symbiote 9y ago
If you accidentally delete some files (even all the files!), won't Syncthing delete all the "backups"? I don't use Syncthing, I use an rsync script I wrote over 10 years ago, using the --link-dest option to keep incremental backups for around 2 years. This relies on Zsh's fancy globbing, but the gist of it is: date=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M) [for loop over users] older=( $backups/$user/*(N/om) ) rsync --archive --recursive \ --fuzzy --partial --partial-dir=$backups/$user/.rsync-partial \ --log-file=$tempfile --link-dest=${^older[1,20]} \ --files-from=$configdir/I-$user \ --exclude-from=$configdir/X-$user \ $user@$from:/ $backups/$user/$date/
- anc84 9y ago
  Syncthing has options to store versions of files so that scenario is easily avoided: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html
  - lewisl9029 9y ago
    Unfortunately, in my experience, Syncthing's versioning mechanisms leave much to be desired compared to what I'm used to from Dropbox. AFAIK all of Syncthing's versioning schemes only keep versions of files that have been changed _on other devices_, and not those that have changed on the device itself, whereas what I'm looking for is an option to keep a synchronized version history for all files on all devices, and the ability to more intuitively roll back and roll forward the state of any file to any revision without having to mess with manually moving and replacing files and reading timestamps (better yet would be the ability to do so for entire directories, but I realize this would probably be very difficult to accomplish across devices in a decentralized manner).
- rovr138 9y ago
  I used a similar script for a long time but I'm using now rnsapshot.
GordonS 9y ago
For me, one of the main benefits of cloud-based backup is that it's off-site - so if my house burns down, my data is still safe.
- HelloNurse 9y ago
  You just need another house to burn down. Don't you have friends or relatives at a reasonable distance who can set up mutual backups on each other's home servers?
  - GordonS 9y ago
    Yes, but nobody else with a FTTC internet connection with an unlimited bandwidth allowance (I'm in the UK). I have 2TB of data, so speed is important.
  - creepydata 9y ago
    I don't have a single friend that has a home server. Most adults don't even own computers anymore, just phones and perhaps an iPad.
    - ytjohn 9y ago
      A good scenario is building a backup server/nas solution that you can put in a little cubby at your friends place. There's trust involved that you're not using their internet to hack the government, and you have to be mindful of their bandwidth/power costs. So not a rackmount server or even a tower, but something much smaller and very appliance looking. A nuc sitting atop a wd passport or their "my book". If it provides them a benefit like an in-house plex server, even better.
- brixon 9y ago
  Think about a Media Safe. Some are really expensive, but this one is not too bad. Just a really small storage area. https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-2040F-Water-Media/dp/B000GB0K8U https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-2040F-Water-Media/dp/B000...
olegkikin 9y ago
So you're one house fire away from losing all your data forever.

lewisl9029 9y ago

I've moved mostly to syncing through Syncthing for my devices too, but I'm curious what people use for sharing files with others and accessing files through a browser on machines you don't control?

Symbiote 9y ago

If you accidentally delete some files (even all the files!), won't Syncthing delete all the "backups"? I don't use Syncthing, I use an rsync script I wrote over 10 years ago, using the --link-dest option to keep incremental backups for around 2 years. This relies on Zsh's fancy globbing, but the gist of it is: date=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M) [for loop over users] older=( $backups/$user/*(N/om) ) rsync --archive --recursive \ --fuzzy --partial --partial-dir=$backups/$user/.rsync-partial \ --log-file=$tempfile --link-dest=${^older[1,20]} \ --files-from=$configdir/I-$user \ --exclude-from=$configdir/X-$user \ $user@$from:/ $backups/$user/$date/

anc84 9y ago
Syncthing has options to store versions of files so that scenario is easily avoided: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html
- lewisl9029 9y ago
  Unfortunately, in my experience, Syncthing's versioning mechanisms leave much to be desired compared to what I'm used to from Dropbox. AFAIK all of Syncthing's versioning schemes only keep versions of files that have been changed _on other devices_, and not those that have changed on the device itself, whereas what I'm looking for is an option to keep a synchronized version history for all files on all devices, and the ability to more intuitively roll back and roll forward the state of any file to any revision without having to mess with manually moving and replacing files and reading timestamps (better yet would be the ability to do so for entire directories, but I realize this would probably be very difficult to accomplish across devices in a decentralized manner).
rovr138 9y ago
I used a similar script for a long time but I'm using now rnsapshot.

GordonS 9y ago

For me, one of the main benefits of cloud-based backup is that it's off-site - so if my house burns down, my data is still safe.

HelloNurse 9y ago
You just need another house to burn down. Don't you have friends or relatives at a reasonable distance who can set up mutual backups on each other's home servers?
- GordonS 9y ago
  Yes, but nobody else with a FTTC internet connection with an unlimited bandwidth allowance (I'm in the UK). I have 2TB of data, so speed is important.
- creepydata 9y ago
  I don't have a single friend that has a home server. Most adults don't even own computers anymore, just phones and perhaps an iPad.
  - ytjohn 9y ago
    A good scenario is building a backup server/nas solution that you can put in a little cubby at your friends place. There's trust involved that you're not using their internet to hack the government, and you have to be mindful of their bandwidth/power costs. So not a rackmount server or even a tower, but something much smaller and very appliance looking. A nuc sitting atop a wd passport or their "my book". If it provides them a benefit like an in-house plex server, even better.
brixon 9y ago
Think about a Media Safe. Some are really expensive, but this one is not too bad. Just a really small storage area. https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-2040F-Water-Media/dp/B000GB0K8U https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-2040F-Water-Media/dp/B000...

olegkikin 9y ago

So you're one house fire away from losing all your data forever.