What personal cloud storage would you recommend?
I’ve been looking to try get away from Google cloud lately but it’s been hard to find an alternative. I’ve looked at services similar to Google cloud all the way to setting up OwnClouc on DigitslOcean but I’m still unsure.
What do you use and recommend for personal cloud storage?
17 comments
It's not cloud storage, but I can't recommend SyncThing enough. Syncs selected local folders between any/all of your devices whenever they're able to contact each other.
I use it specifically to keep my files out of the cloud, but in the past I've also installed it on a DigitalOcean instance and had it function sort of like cloud storage that way.
My favorite thing about it is that you're selecting existing local folders to sync rather than moving files to a special "sync" directory, meaning it's very flexible in what you can do with it (syncing dot files between machines, as one example).
The only problem is there's no good iOS client yet, but macOS, Windows, Linux, Android are all supported.
I use it specifically to keep my files out of the cloud, but in the past I've also installed it on a DigitalOcean instance and had it function sort of like cloud storage that way.
My favorite thing about it is that you're selecting existing local folders to sync rather than moving files to a special "sync" directory, meaning it's very flexible in what you can do with it (syncing dot files between machines, as one example).
The only problem is there's no good iOS client yet, but macOS, Windows, Linux, Android are all supported.
We needed to move our company off Google Docs and rather than pay Dropbox we used OwnCloud which has worked really well for us.
The only thing we miss is shared doc editing but we only really used that intensively a couple of times so we didn't miss it much.
The desktop integration is pretty good. The one advantage Dropbox would have had is LAN syncing, but as we mostly work remotely this isn't a big issue.
The only thing we miss is shared doc editing but we only really used that intensively a couple of times so we didn't miss it much.
The desktop integration is pretty good. The one advantage Dropbox would have had is LAN syncing, but as we mostly work remotely this isn't a big issue.
I just launched File Ark two days ago on Product Hunt to solve this personal cloud storage issue that I had. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/file-ark
It's not a backup solution, but rather an archive. With backups, you might expect files to be synced after changes, which my app won't do. Rather as an archive, you can just drag n' drop the files/folders you want to archive and it'll be moved to cloud storage and then you can delete the local copy of those files on your computer.
The files in this archive storage are also not meant to be shared like Dropbox or Google Drive because it's supposed to be your personal archive of files/folders, so there's no sharing functionality.
If that fits you what you are looking for, do give it a try.
It's not a backup solution, but rather an archive. With backups, you might expect files to be synced after changes, which my app won't do. Rather as an archive, you can just drag n' drop the files/folders you want to archive and it'll be moved to cloud storage and then you can delete the local copy of those files on your computer.
The files in this archive storage are also not meant to be shared like Dropbox or Google Drive because it's supposed to be your personal archive of files/folders, so there's no sharing functionality.
If that fits you what you are looking for, do give it a try.
I'm not sure recommending to delete the original/local copy is a good idea. Better to have more copies than less, otherwise data loss is a huge risk
I completely agree that data loss is a huge issue. Cloud storage usually comes with pretty high redundancy, but if you're using a service you don't know much about, it's definitely safer to keep your own copy of the file.
A use case I had was that my Mac was running out of hard disk space and I didn't want to carry around an external hard drive or get a new Mac, just for more disk space. I tried cleaning out as much unused applications and files as I could, but there still remained large and old files that I wanted to preserve to keep a record of them.
Moving it to cloud storage for archival gets me the long-term storage and by deleting the local copies of it, I was able to get back a good chunk of space on my Mac. Not everyone may have this use case, but it was one I came across where deleting the local copy made sense.
A use case I had was that my Mac was running out of hard disk space and I didn't want to carry around an external hard drive or get a new Mac, just for more disk space. I tried cleaning out as much unused applications and files as I could, but there still remained large and old files that I wanted to preserve to keep a record of them.
Moving it to cloud storage for archival gets me the long-term storage and by deleting the local copies of it, I was able to get back a good chunk of space on my Mac. Not everyone may have this use case, but it was one I came across where deleting the local copy made sense.
I'm using NextCloud on a DigitalOcean VPS (the files themselves are on a separate volume so the VPS drive can remain small), and it's been really solid. I think the web UI for NextCloud is great, and while the clients for iOS and macOS are not best-in-class compared to, say, Dropbox, they definitely work and get the job done. I love the fact that, at the end of the day, I have a file on a Linux server somewhere that is THE cloud file. It's my data, under my control, and that I'm able to troubleshoot myself. (Compare with a major glitch I had with iCloud Drive on my Mac that Apple never could get fixed for me. I literally to this day have a broken iCloud Drive connection on my MacBook Pro.)
I've been using Seafile recently and generally liking it. The experience with the iOS app absolutely leaves something to be desired (photos only as far as I can see, even though the server and web app supports other kinds of files) though. The web apps support in app editing of markdown files. There's an admin UI so you can easily manage accounts, and by default everything is private unless shared.
The server was very straightforward to set up on a DO droplet. They even have an install guide for Seafile on Ubuntu 18.04
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-sync...
The server was very straightforward to set up on a DO droplet. They even have an install guide for Seafile on Ubuntu 18.04
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-sync...
I use Resilio Sync. I have a NAS that is running Resilio, but a computer that you never turn off could also work. All my computers and even family members have folders being synced to my NAS using Resilio. Then my NAS backs up those folders and files to BackBlaze every night.
It makes it nice because I can still access all my files using the selective sync feature and if I am moving between computers, I can drop anything in those specific folders and have access to them on any computer running Resilio. As well as be confident that it will be backed up and encrypted.
It makes it nice because I can still access all my files using the selective sync feature and if I am moving between computers, I can drop anything in those specific folders and have access to them on any computer running Resilio. As well as be confident that it will be backed up and encrypted.
I’m using a self hosted instance of Nextcloud, and it just works.
Is anybody using OneDrive? The family pack for Office 365 seems to be quite fair value.
I use it for work. It is way better than it was a couple of years ago, but the sync is weaker than Google and much weaker than Dropbox, which is the gold standard.
If you don’t upload a lot of big files often and can deal with their restrictions for characters in file names it’s a great solution for 98% of people.
If you don’t upload a lot of big files often and can deal with their restrictions for characters in file names it’s a great solution for 98% of people.
I ended up choosing Google.
Dropbox is fabulous but expensive. If you’re a Mac person and don’t need to share folders, iCloud is much better these days as well — my spouse uses that.
Rolling your own seems like a more expensive path more likely to lead to disaster.
Dropbox is fabulous but expensive. If you’re a Mac person and don’t need to share folders, iCloud is much better these days as well — my spouse uses that.
Rolling your own seems like a more expensive path more likely to lead to disaster.
i only want to back up a few git repos, so i use aws' git hosting service, "code commit". it costs me <= $1 / month -- i suspect it might actually be $0 / month and the $1 charge is from some other aws service i am using.
i have other repos stored for free in private github or bitbucket accounts, but i prefer to be a paying customer for storing some things that i feel are more critical.
edit: it looks like aws code commit storage costs are 0.06 $ gb^{-1} month^{-1} -- about 10x the cost of the wasabi storage mentioned elsewhere in this discussion. but the first 50 gb month^{-1} is free.
i have other repos stored for free in private github or bitbucket accounts, but i prefer to be a paying customer for storing some things that i feel are more critical.
edit: it looks like aws code commit storage costs are 0.06 $ gb^{-1} month^{-1} -- about 10x the cost of the wasabi storage mentioned elsewhere in this discussion. but the first 50 gb month^{-1} is free.
I made a site that you can use to compare features / prices between cloud storage services - https://comparecloud.io
I self host many apps on a VPS including Nextcloud, using Wasabi for off site backups. Very happy do far.
I'm using Syncthing with a VPS & backups enabled to cover the passive backup angle. For a distributed system the whole setup was surprisingly painless.
I like Wasabi as a storage backend. It's incredibly cheap ($0.0059 GB/month) and has no bandwidth fees.
I'm actually using Wasabi as my cloud storage backend for File Ark (https://fileark.launchaco.com/), which is an app I made to interface with it.
It's definitely cheaper for archiving files, but there are some catches like minimum file size and storage duration costs, but still overall cheaper than the other storage solutions I've come across.
It's definitely cheaper for archiving files, but there are some catches like minimum file size and storage duration costs, but still overall cheaper than the other storage solutions I've come across.
I use ownCloud on DigitalOcean and it works fine. It was a bit of a pain to set up but not too bad.
Depends what it’s for? Backup? Editing files online? I use Dropbox and am quite happy with it.
I enjoy hetzner cloud products.