Hacker News Reader

Comment by fapjacks | Hacker News Reader

Totally. You wanna talk about people forgetting? It seems everyone has totally forgotten (or forgiven) that Dropbox was mentioned specifically in the Snowden leaks as a source.

View on HN

are there better alternatives though?

box.com is pretty good. I've personally used it for several years now and I can't recall the last time there was any real issue with it, usability or security-wise.

"Better" is subjective. I consider Google Drive much better, personally.

Alternatives, though? Plenty: Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, iCloud Backup and iCloud Drive.. the list goes on with a simple Google search for "online storage"

Does google drive work the same way as Dropbox? Cross platform, acts as a folder in your home dir, selective sync, etc? Seriously ready to move on from Dropbox and my google fiber account comes with a free terabyte of google drive.

I've never set it up but I believe that you can get it to work the same way.

Install the desktop application: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2374987 Change sync settings: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375083

IIRC it has limited linux support, but works that way in windows/macOS. Another article today mentioned rclone, if you need linux support.

There's no Drive for Linux, alas.

The Windows and Mac clients create a folder in your home directory. There are ways to rename it, but essentially anything you put in the ~/Google Drive/ folder is synced just like Dropbox.

No native linux support is a bummer, but if you only need to use it there infrequently, the web client is quite capable for manual uploads and downloads.

Don't forget Spideroak! They offer end-to-end encryption of your data.

if you are willing to use a rather more complicated system with harder setup, syncthing.net is great, it syncs files between your computers without needing a cloud service.

For more similar alternatives, running owncloud on a VM is straightforward. And, of course the featureset is limited compared to Dropbox.

I had big problems with OwnCloud. Specifically it ate files at work, but did so in such an insidious manner (slowly, over time, with no indication that anything was wrong) that I don't trust it to this day. I haven't checked lately, but the issue was acknowledged by OwnCloud devs, with the workaround being to "use a secondary sync application" (no kidding). These days I use Seafile, and I can also say that your suggestion of Syncthing is a good one. I have used and enjoy both Syncthing and Seafile. Just a word of advice: Don't trust Seafile to encrypt your data. Use Veracrypt (or equivalent) in place of the built-in "encryption" offered by Seafile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com