Creating your own storage solution instead of Dropbox

Oct 15, 2019 19 Comments

Has anyone tried creating their own sync/backup solution instead of using Dropbox/Google Drive?

As an engineer, I don’t see why I should pay these companies when I can make my own simple sync app and use AWS S3/Google Storage directly. muuuuuch cheaper.

Not trying to sync across devices and such. Just backing up important files.

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TOP 19 Comments
  • Tesla / Eng
    🐉⛈

    Go to company page Tesla Eng

    🐉⛈
    Oct 15, 2019 1
  • Google
    IjTG62

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    IjTG62
    It is not as simple as you think. Think about detecting file changes across years of backup. Also, the network cost plus effort to manage the system would definitely be higher than 9$ a month at 1 TB scale.
    Oct 15, 2019 0
  • Google
    zLoA85

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    zLoA85
    I do this. Have a Synology NAS at home with ~10tb storage. It backs up my phone photos at full size, my wife's phone photos, both of our MacBooks and my desktop. Also run a virtual server inside it through VPN to automate torrents. ALSO it's a Plex server I can access from anywhere. Love it. Lmk if you have questions.
    Oct 15, 2019 7
    • Google
      zLoA85

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      zLoA85
      Actually for backup *only* I would buy two single bay, low processing power units and store one at your parents house or something. They have a feature built in to back up to another remote NAS. I just use mine to stream 4k video and that requires more grunt
      Oct 15, 2019
    • No the NAS isn’t just for backing up important files. It will also have torrent files.

      Right now I have a hard drive plugged into Apple Airport but my new apartment is bigger so I need to expand my WiFi range. I was thinking to just buy Google WiFi and replace the Airport but that screws up my hard drive set up. Which is why I’m looking into NAS now.

      Do you know if there’s a stand alone storage unit that doesn’t need to be plugged in using Ethernet? Like truly wireless. Sure, the latency goes up but not having bunch of hardware sitting next to each other would be nice.
      Oct 15, 2019
  • Box
    Trie me

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    Trie me
    I guess you can but why not pay the 5 bucks a month and spend time leetcoding instead. There is a ton of features that file sync and share services provide that you probably wont need
    Oct 15, 2019 3
  • Yelp / Eng
    imouto

    Go to company page Yelp Eng

    imouto
    Have you considered rsync
    Oct 16, 2019 1