I’ve been wanting to move away from Dropbox for a long while, but I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement. Dropbox has always been super convenient and has just worked for me.
I’ve tried Tresoit but the low link sharing limits (2gb) and 10gb limit for files is somewhat of a deal breaker for me. I’ve been interested in Proton Drive for a while, but until their mac app is ready it’s unusable for me.
I’ve also tried self-hosting a nextcloud instance (multiple times) but I’ve always just had too many issues with it. It’s been inconsistent in actually backing up files from my mac, I’ve had so many file conflicts, etc. I have a truenas scale server, so if there are other self-hosted methods I should try let me know.
Currently, I’m looking at filen and sync.com, but I’ve heard both have their issues so I’m curious to hear everyones thoughts on them as well.
Thanks!
Self hosted Nextcloud. Immich for photos.
⚠️ Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos.
immediately followed by
⚠️ Always follow 3-2-1 backup plan for your precious photos and videos!
now I don’t think I’m overly bright, but that doesn’t seem like advice to ignore
Weirdly enough, I didn’t say it was my only way to store anything, nor that the program stores photos at all.
It syncs the photos from my devices, the storage for those photos is on a separate server (as is the NextCloud storage) that is encrypted and backed up to Backblaze B2.
Immich is a gallery and organization app that syncs from your devices, the underlying storage is whatever you provide.
Weirdly enough, you didn’t say but drew the readers to that conclusion, hence my point for others.
This actually seems like a very cohesive solution, might try it out!
Always follow 3-2-1 backup plan for your precious photos and videos!
This is good advice.
Nextcloud with Hetzner your-storageshare. ~5€/m for 1TB is hard to beat and it runs so well. I still use encryption and a few plugins like on a selfhosted instance.
This is a great option, I have used it too in the past. Since, I have switched to iCloud when they implemented e2e encryption. Seems no one else here goes that route, trust issues maybe.
I do miss versioning with iCloud.
I have proton drive too, waiting on that osx client.
ICloud with e2e could be nice. But having a mix of Linux and Windows laptops in the household it is just not possible. There simply is no Linux client for it. And last time I checked the Windows client didn’t support e2e. So there goes that.
And to be completely honest I really do have trust issues with Apple (and Big Tech in general).
How do you deal with the encryption? How did you set that up? Or you encrypt on your pc and then send to hetzner?
I only use the encrypted storage built in natively in Nextcloud.
but only for local storage.
The e2ee was not very good the last time I checked. I should check out any new developments though.
I’ve heard a lot of issues (from a few old reddit threads though) in regards to NC Encryption, specifically with data loss and file integrity. I don’t think I’m comfortable going that route, but if they’ve made improvements I might as well check it out
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Hetzner EU only? If I’m in the U.S., wouldn’t that make file syncs rather slow?
I think they opened or are planning to open a US data center. Other than that they are in Germany and Norway at the moment.
I’m in Germany, too, but I synced to it while being in the US, in Spain, and in Indonesia on vacation and I never had any problems with delays. And even if it was slow it was the hotel wifi 100% of the time. But using it full time from across the ocean ymmw.
Looks like they did open a US data center, but the storage shares are still Germany & Norway.
I might still give it a shot, it’s not a large commitment so might be good to try.
google drive.
i pretty much sold my soul to google at this point
anyway they have my address, payment info, all of my photos since 2014, my preferences from YouTube, google maps data and since I’m using google location sharing and find my phone, they have access to my exact location at all times; and half of my payments go through google pay and I’m using android with my google account.I use a Synology NAS which I can access from everywhere as long as I have internet connection.
Yeh this is probably the quickest, simplistic and most robust way. Not the cheapest but unless you have unraid ready and know exactly what to do you’d be hard pushed to find a better solution.
I use unraid, nextcloud, Immich, Tailscale and so on . It’s not set and forget.
Syncthing to my selfhosted proxmox server at home then rclone encrypted and unencrypted depending on content, to my cloud storage. Fully automtatic meanwhile.
Rclone syncs to various cloud services so the provider doesn’t matter from a technical point of view.
Nextcloud docker on unRAID has worked well for me on…
Android, Windows and my MacBook(s)
I use it to Auto upload photos from my phone as well as cloud storage. Shared directories with my wife and son for easy sharing.
No real issues outside a couple painful upgrades in the past .
Which docker do you use?
I just pay Google $99/yr. for 2TB of storage. I have my Google Drive mapped as G: and Windows libraries mapped to folders in the Google Drive.
Super simple and cheap. I still have local backups for fast restores, and Google for cloud.
Google
With cryptomator
It’s super cheap, and with cryptomator you can easily locally encrypt anything you put on there. With great iOS and Android support aswell
I’ll second Cryptomator, it’s relatively convenient and means I can use the free tiers of Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, etc without them having a nose through all my stuff
I’ve never heard of crypt.ee till today, but wow is it amazing for all my document editing needs. Thank you!
Works well so far, is end to end encrypted, open source, and the apps are nice and solid.
I run Dropbox, since they’re only in cloud storage they can’t really run around and sell data, if found out there would be no reason to stay for their customers. Unlike say Google and Microsoft.
I wouldn’t trust a billion dollar company to not sell my datam Just sayin
You run dropbox? Impressive.
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Nope.
Nextcloud on my own hardware
Mega
I pay for it anyway since I was lucky enough to get a few accounts on a private forum where everything is shared via mega, it’s very active and a great community. Only a few times I haven’t found something I was looking for there, and that was quickly solved by posting a request. (The only way to join is to get personally invited. And no, I won’t use my invites for randoms, don’t ask).
Haven’t used torrents for close to a decade now, it’s nice to have basically anything easily findable with direct download from mega.
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I have started trialling mega. 20GB free.
So far so good.
One minor annoyance I have had is keepass .kdb files. You can’t just open from mega android, make changes and have it auto save back to the cloud. Have to save out, edit then share back in. There is a autosync app by a third party which I have not tried.