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Going back to Dropbox from Google Drive
- donniezazen 14y agoDrive was never an option as a Linux user.
- ankitaggarwal 14y agoI moved back to Dropbox after a month of use. The only thing that bothered me was google takes a long time to polish its product. Why should I be paying during all this period.
- AdamGibbins 14y agoI just moved to AeroFS, no regrets.
- gmcabrita 14y agoWould you be willing to sling away an invite?
- AdamGibbins 14y agoSent (and that was my last of the 2 I was given).
- goronbjorn 14y agoHow did you get an invite? I've been on the waitlist for well over a year without any updates from them.
- AdamGibbins 14y agoI got one last week, after having waited a year.
- Cyril-Boh 14y agoI have 2 invites. I'll send you one if you want. The other invite is also available to whoever else wants it.
- Johngibb 14y agoCan I have one please?
- Cyril-Boh 14y agoSent
- Zaephyr 14y agoI love to try AeroFS if you still have the invite available.
- Cyril-Boh 14y agoSorry I only have 1 left and I'm holding it for goronbjorn. Will keep you in mind if I receive more.
- goronbjorn 14y agoYes, please send it to me! Thanks a ton. seanandrewroseATgmailDOTcom
- Cyril-Boh 14y agoSent
- icelancer 14y agoSince Dropbox offered me 50 GB for using a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S3, I've stuck with them. I used Google Drive since I use the spreadsheets, and I absolutely hate it. So I'm sticking with Dropbox for now.
- smegel 14y agoI used Google Drive for about 5 minutes then went back to Dropbox and haven't looked back. Firstly, finding where the hell the Google drive folder was located was a pain - then discovering it's odd internal hierarchy and the fact that trying to open files in there launched Google Docs rather than the local application default drove me mad. Dropbox gives me exactly what I want and need: a simple folder that does sync across all my devices and opens files using the local default application.
- jorts 14y agoI'm not sure what you saw, but your Google Drive folder is just a subfolder under your user folder, similar to how Dropbox is, I believe, in your My Docs folder. You can also right click on the icon in the systray and browse to the Google Drive folder. Are you not on Windows?
- smegel 14y agoI think when I installed Dropbox I was able to choose the folder, or it created a shortcut on my desktop. In truth the issue was not so much the location, but the internal structure that seemed obscure at the time (this was when GDrive first came out, might be different now). Dropbox just appeared as a simple, normal folder. That's it. I put stuff in, it got synced. I clicked on stuff inside, and it opened like a normal file in any other folder. It just worked.
- skyhook_mockups 14y agohmm not sure what you mean by internal structure that seemed obscure. GDrive works just like you describe: a simple, normal folder. That's it. I put stuff in, it got synced
- jorts 14y agoI'm pretty sure as skyhook_mockups described it's just a normal folder. GDrive is going to offer a lot once more applications start offering their services services based on what you store in GDrive which is what I see as the differentiating factor for things stored in GDrive. I imagine Dropbox will mimic it in time, but they're behind at the moment.
- tlogan 14y agoAt least uploading into Google Drive did not created hundreds of thousands of duplicates [1] [2] [3]. I still did not get any official answer from Google support. [1] http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/Yjmkd4nbhw4/C_ns26Fn2gQJ http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/Yjmkd4nbhw... [2] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3910363?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3910363?start=0&tst... [3] https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/drive/d45pvBXNnMM https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/d...
- jervisfm 14y agoGoogle Drive does appear to have performance issues with big data sets. I too have a lot of data (20GB +) in the service and whenever I restart my machine, it does churn the CPU "scanning the web" for changes. Memory usage is also rather high at 600MB. I have never really used dropbox so I don't know if that is really any better from a resource standpoint although from the author of this post indicates like that's the case. I'm still sticking with Google Drive since I only restart my machine about once a month, so this is not too much of a problem for me. In any case, I hope that these issues would get addressed in a future update to the client.
- revelation 14y agoDropbox startup can easily bring my "spinning rust" platter to knees. They really need to copy TrueCrypts "make way for IO activity" option during encryption.
- jervisfm 14y agoI am curious, how much data do you sync up with drop box ?
- Mythbusters 14y agoHmmm you should really try skydrive in that case. Much more reliable and friendly to use.
- d23 14y agoFor our company it was the lack of the ability to selectively sync sub-folders. We would have to download 80 GB just to have a few photoshop files for a particular client synced between us while we worked on projects. Completely unusable.
- est 14y agoPerhaps use symbolic links?
- mslot 14y agoLosing my files in Google Drive is what made me decide to get a paid Dropbox account.
- revelation 14y agoWhat a scary sight. They are having mechanical turks roam their support forums for support stars giving big-company-esque answers: Sorry to hear your experience with Google Drive was troublesome PayamM. Google Drive is constantly improving and thank you for the feedback!
- Evbn 14y agoGoogle's community managers are an embarrassment. They are supposed to help, but they have no more knowledge and power than the users reporting bugs. It would be more effective and less annoying to just have a script that marks every thread "WONTFIX".
- rdl 14y agoI've been testing Dropbox, box.net, Google Drive, and AeroFS head to head for the past month or so (I guess I should add SpiderOak, Wuala, Bitcasa, and maybe something else I don't know about) They all do pretty well for small datasets (1-10GB of text files, office documents, mp3s, and sometimes 1-2GB video files and similar files) on OSX and Windows 7. I haven't tried them on Linux or mobile devices much. They all kind of suck with multi-user access (which I simulated by putting clients on all my machines and using them randomly), larger files, etc. None have particularly good performance (fucking Comcast Business; reasonably good on the colo LAN but still not what I'd consider great). Even with the LAN Sync options turned on, adding a new large file with a few client devices on the same LAN causes pain (multiple trips up and down...). A per-client 1/10 of the link size throttle isn't really helpful with 10 clients. AeroFS is different (since it's peer to peer), but is a lot slower than the LAN speed in my experience to sync. Having clients on VPN sometimes makes the whole thing even weirder, since machines on the same LAN aren't on the same network, so syncing traffic goes over a (potentially remote) VPN. And then there's the lulz caused by sync-over-cellular, which admittedly isn't transparent to the client (mifi hotspot sometimes). Looking forward to just getting an 8x4TB Synology or FreeNAS for home, syncing with some combination of physical drives and rsync to/from the colo, and using disk in the colo. iSCSI seems like the best solution. In the long run, I think what's needed is a smarter client -- it should be smart about syncing based on what network I'm on (VPN, LTE, etc.), pre-caching some files and not others (either explicitly or predictively, and maybe different on different devices) There's also the huge mess of security -- both confidentiality and versioning/availability. For multi-user, you can't just layer truecrypt on top. It's depressing that someone yesterday asked "what's the best way to manage corporate documents without putting a copy on every laptop..." (data room style) and the best answer in 2012 seems to be SharePoint :(
- rogerbinns 14y agoAnother issue to consider is multiple accounts. For example I have 3 Google accounts (1 personal, 2 for work). I also have two Dropbox accounts (1 personal, 1 work). You are essentially in for a world of hurt because all the services want to believe you only have one account, or at the very least a one to one mapping between their accounts and user accounts on your systems. Thankfully I was able to get dropbox running with two different dropbox accounts but with one user account on my systems. This was because dropbox has command line tools (for Linux only) so you can fake them out with different $HOME settings. But on Android etc I am SOL.
- Gustomaximus 14y agoI thought to throw in SugarSnc since it hasn't been mentioned. I also have Dropbox, Drive, Skydrive but Sugar is the one that seems to tick the most boxes for me. It is very easy to choose what folders you sync and to which devices as different devices font need all files. You can add passwords to public folders which is a nice touch. And pricing (at least when I compared 18 months back) was quite competitive.
- jerrya 14y agoI deleted Sugar when on Android it was taking up a significant amount of battery and cycle -- and it was basically doing nothing to do that. Have they fixed that? Is it better on battery on Android now?
- Gustomaximus 14y ago...not really. On Android I do find it burning CPU/battery quite often so I updated settings to only sync when plugged in and on WiFi. It is a minor limitation for me and can do a manual sync if happen to need something from my PC and am on the move. My biggest bug bear is it asks to upload my photos every frickn time I log in despite having deselected in settings and pressing the 'never' option.
- simplexion 14y agoI'll only use SpiderOak. I don't want the company I'm uploading personal files to, to be able to view my files.
- gman99 14y agoI use spideroak as well, mainly because of it's flexibility (partner uses same account, only syncs the necessary folders) and the fact that it's cheap (at the time I signed up; especially considering many people can use the same account) But man, is it slow! (OK, I realise it's encrypting locally, but even accounting for that it just "feels" clunky compared to the competition) Also, I can't seem to view pictures using the online account file browser. It seems to suggest that thumbnails will be visible before downloading, but it never seems to work :( Otherwise, it's really good! (I also have a skydrive, GDrive & a dropbox account that I use for quick sharing, save game backups, etc -- They've all got their strengths)
- tytso 14y agoWhy does it have to be either/or? I use both Google Drive and Dropbox; the two products have different strengths and weakness, and so I see them as complementary.
- Kristine 14y agoThis has been my experience as well. Google Drive is indispensable for editing, sharing, and collaborating on school files, while Dropbox has that "just works" quality as far as storing and syncing my personal archive.
- pacomerh 14y agoI'm a bit paranoid with sensitive data, so wuala.com has been great in my case. You just get a client to access the data and when you upload files they all get encrypted before going up there.
- TopTrix 14y agoDont know about large file size, but the problem with google drive is it is the most memory eating application. It require around 150 MB RAM when not synching. As compared to dropbox require only 40. Even if it has more space for free users i will not use it. Dropbox primary and SkyDrive a secondary are my choices.
- wtallis 14y agoAre you really complaining about a difference of 50 cents worth of RAM, and saying you won't use Google Drive on that basis alone?
- Evbn 14y agoIt costs far more than 50c to upgrade from 8.0GB to 8.1GB. New motherboards are pricy for laptops.
- wtallis 14y agoThat doesn't matter. If you can be bothered to count megabytes of RAM, you already have a shortage, with or without Google Drive (or Dropbox, for that matter).
- TopTrix 14y agoNot complaining about the price of the RAM but it is about the thing, how much load the Google apps create on system resources. And that is because it always try to track each and every user activity.
- sakopov 14y agoWith all of the hate towards Microsoft here i'm not really surprised of no mention of SkyDrive. It's working quite well for me. I never had any technical issues with Dropbox. I don't like their pricing model. The free account offers less space than my Gmail. The pro account offers way too much space for my use to even consider upgrading. My other concern about Dropbox is that it took them weeks to figure out whether or not their system was compromised not long ago with the help of "outside experts." I don't know what to think of a company which hires others to figure out what's going on with their systems. That worries me a little.
- gurkendoktor 14y agoI don't think that HN particularly hates MS, it's just that few people here live inside the MS ecosystem. Google Drive is relevant to those who live in Google's cloud, Dropbox is relevant to all the Mac users I know. That's why these two will be mentioned a lot more often.
- Daishiman 14y agoAll software companies need external security consultants when you go beyond a certain level of of forensic analysis; unless you dedicate completely to that field it's unlikely anyone has in-house staff for that.
- rogerbinns 14y agoThat they hired outsiders is a sign of integrity to me. The cheap option would be a quick internal investigation and a statement of findings that people would be sceptical about. Outsiders bring new perspectives and experience.
- dennisgorelik 14y agoI tried using Google Drive for daily database backups (~10 GB * 2 files). - It failed miserably - could backup these files only occasionally. - Quickly filled out my 100GB quota, even when I deleted old version. Dropbox worked like a charm: reliable and much less expensive, considering that size of history files does not count (with special ~$3/month addition). I looks like Google allocated mediocre product managers for creating G-drive.
- flamingo157 14y agoVery true..same here...Dropbox is just awesome, +1 for it's usability!! I wasted my entire day trying to install 'Google drive' on my Windows 7 machine. It was throwing installation error 1603. What the heck is that!! I tried many solutions searching web (e.g. giving all permissions to %AppData% folder, uninstalling all existing google products etc) but all in vain!! Google...why do you make such creepy s/w?
- bitcartel 14y agoDropbox bug which results in data loss has not been resolved yet. So far it appears to have affected both Mac and Linux users. http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can-permanently-lose-your-files http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can-permanently-lose-yo...