Cloud storage recommendations?
I'm thinking of paying for some cloud storage and I'd like to hear your recommendations and experiences with cloud storage providers. I'd like the best bang/buck and preferably something that works well with Linux (Void is my current distro). I had been using Keybase as they offer 250GB of space for free(?), though I recently learned they've been acquired by Zoom which...concerns me. Plus, I can't seem to get the filesystem mounted on Void for some reason =/.
Here are a few I'm considering:
Major Players
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Google One: $20 a year for 100GB
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Microsoft 365: $70 for 1TB of storage + Microsoft productivity suite (that I probably won't use all that much)
Out of these options, I think I'd prefer Microsoft at this point.
Smaller Players
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Cloudamo: $25 a year for 100GB. Bonus that it's built on open-source tech and looks pretty flexible.
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pCloud: I've been seeing this recommended in my current search for a provider. But... seeing as of this posting the website is down, I'm not filled with confidence.
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Wasabi: More of a DIY option, it'd be ~$72 a year for 1TB.
Cloudamo looks the most promising, here.
Complete DIY
- I have a 2TB drive that I guess I can expose to the Internet as a fileserver. Dunno what my ISPs policy on this is and I wouldn't be confident in its reliability.
Well, those are a few options. Got any more?
I self hosted Nextcloud for like 1.5-2 years, and let me tell you, it's not worth it. Honesty it works fine like 90% of the time, but the 10% of the time doesn't, it is exceedingly annoying, especially when it happens to fuck up in important times when you really just want the damn thing to work.
Right now I'm using the base paid tier for Dropbox (120/yr for 2.5 TB). I use 3 desktop OSes fairly commonly, plus both mobile ones (work phone and personal phone), and from my experience Dropbox, for all the weird shit they try to pull in order to diversify, still does the best job at being good enough on everything.
Could you go into a bit of a detail as to what happened when Nextcloud didn't work?
I'm not @stu2b50, but I've also been hosting my own for several years now. Two things I've run into repeatedly ...
Occasionally, (and often through no fault of the users) bad data gets written into the db, and it's a PITA to identify the problem, then to find and remove the bad data.
The other thing is not really Nextcloud's fault, but it still should be handled more gracefully ... server upgrades and other basic server maintenance can accidentally switch the server over to a different version of php, and it is really difficult to find out which version of php Nextcloud is actually using (as opposed to the rest of the server -- yes, it can be different). Then, resetting php specifically for the Nextcloud service can also be tricky (resetting it server-wide isn't always effective). This is a php-thing more than a Nextcloud thing, but still.
In Nextcloud's defense, these are issues I have not run into in well over a year now, and the Nextcloud community is pretty active with bug fixes, new features, release schedules, that kind of thing.
Some options I can think of based on the requirements you have mentioned.
(From cheapest to more expensive options).
#1 - P2P Sync
You could use an old laptop or a raspberry pi and hook up your 2TB HDD to it and run a P2P sync application like Syncthing.
Syncthing works great on all devices I have tried.
Pros:
Cons:
#2 - Self Hosted
Some folks have talked about Nextcloud already. I personally prefer Seafile.
Seafile works really well as a Dropbox replacement, it has complete feature parity with Dropbox (as far as I can tell).
(This is what I use for myself, my SO and few other friends. Happy to answer any questions regarding this)
It has clients for all major platforms (and a web client as well). It also has 2 types of clients for linux (not sure about windows), one which downloads files locally and keeps them in sync, and another which creates a FUSE mounts and acts like a SMB share drive mounted.
If your ISP does not allow access to your home network from the internet, a easy solution is to get a VPS (which could be around $5-$10/month), and put your Seafile Server and VPS on a VPN (wireguard is very easy to setup).
Seafile itself is fairly easy to deploy using Docker.
(This also allows you to self-host other services, like say bitwarden, etc :)
You could also host your seafile instance with online storage service like S3, but I am not a fan of using AWS for personal projects.
Pros:
Cons:
#3 - rClone
Another user had a tongue-in-cheek comment about rSync, but there is a open source tool called rClone. This works with a bunch of cloud providers[1] and cloud storage services (like S3, etc).
This would not be a real-time sync, but if you are using linux and only use one or two clients at a time, this may be an option too (with a background cron job)!
(I personally use this with OpenDrive as an online backup and use tarsnap for more important stuff)
Backblaze is good and reputable. Complete DIY is also an excellent option. If you go that route, I recommend getting a second 2tb drive and setting up zfs with mirroring. Should be as reliable as anything else (modulo fires and earthquakes).
I just went through their website about their personal backup software for Windows and came across this hilarious bit of copy:
Ah yes, there's nothing better than manual memory management.
Your apprehension is totally fair, but there are plenty of competent C programmers out there and valgrind is a thing.
UPDATE
...that no one asked for...
I ended up getting a Microsoft 365 subscription. MOSTLY because I was looking for an email service that I could use a custom domain with, and figured I'd kill two birds with one stone if I got the 365 sub. WELL... turns out that a personal 365 subscription will only allow a custom domain from GoDaddy (yuck...). I found this workaround, but... no dice.
SO, I feel like I threw some money away as I don't imagine I'll use the office apps much and I don't really have enough stuff to justify 1TB of cloud storage space. Guess I need to start hoarding more data...
What a weird restriction.
From what I understand, it's to protect neophyte users from themselves. Still... seems weird that Microsoft would exclusively team with GoDaddy. I guess their name is most familiar (and their pockets deepest)?
What, really? Oh wow, that's crappy. I can see some rationale...but they should really have been upfront and informed you (or any other new customer) of that fact. Sorry to hear about this!
I've replaced cloud storage with p2p file-exchange between my decices using Resilio Sync.
Features include:
I run it on my home desktop, laptop and my phone and it works quite well. It's a little battery-hungry on Android, but gets the job done.
Are there any advantages of Resilio over the open source Syncthing?
Not sure if @weystrom is saying Syncthing does not have E2E (their phrasing is a little unclear), but afaik it does (per Block Exchange Protocol).
Also from Syncthing's FAQs
If I share files with you with Syncthing - you can see them, they would lie unencrypted on your disk. You could set up LUKS or a similar system of course, but you're at the mercy of the hardware provider, basically.
With Resilio Sync I can give you a hash string, you would sync the files by adding it through the client, but they'd be encrypted, since you would not have a key. This is really handy for syncing files to VPS if you have one or just exchanging disk space with a friend for data redundancy.
I think we have different definitions of what E2E entails.
If I am using Signal for messaging, the messages are encrypted on my phone and traverse in an encrypted format to the receiver and is decrypted on their device's Signal. Syncthing works pretty much the same way.
I have not used Resilio Sync (the fact it uses a proprietary protocol which has not had a security audit turns me off it), so I cannot really speak about it.
For the use-case you mentioned above:
Syncthing does support this 1.
Oh, this is new! That's pretty much the reason I dropped syncthing, I might try it again now, thanks!
Mostly, the lack of end-to-end encryption. I also find that Syncthing is more reliable with peer connections.
I have pCloud and even though the site is down, their service is up and running and I'm able to access my files just fine. I'm also thinking it might be a wider outage? Kobo's website has been down for a few hours for me too, which is odd.
I can't give you more feedback on pCloud because I just started using them this weekend as a cloud music service, but the nice thing about them is that they offer lifetime plans rather than subscriptions (although of course, the downside is that if they're not sustainable, the "lifetime" plan will be anything but).
For all of my main files I use Tresorit, which costs megabucks, but it's end-to-end encrypted and has a native Linux app. I got a 50% discount on my first year by doing the trial and then giving the high cost as my reason for cancelling after the trial period was over. Upon renewal after my first year I messaged support and identified that I was on a promotional rate and asked if they would match it. They didn't match the 50% but gave me ~30% off IIRC. I expect this pattern will keep happening until I'm paying full price in a year or two, but I'm honestly happy with the service and there really isn't an encrypted competitor on Linux that keeps up with them (or at least, not one that works with my low level of technical knowledge).
Yea, that's definitely a nice option, but like you said...who knows how long they'll be around! Well, they do have a 10GB free option, so I suppose I'll give 'em a go to test the experience.
By the way, I wonder how that music hosting option gets around their intellectual property policy.
Good question! I have no idea.
All the stuff I'm hosting is stuff I've legitimately bought (not that they'd be able to know that just from looking at the files), and very little of it is from major labels anyway, so I'm probably in the clear.
Also, the music service I'm using appears to have paired with pCloud specifically (there's the option to sign up with pCloud through the music service itself), so I'd imagine they're at least somewhat comfortable with the idea of users hosting media libraries. I feel like, pragmatically, I should be fine as long as I'm using my library privately and not sharing files.
I've used pCloud for - I think - two years after purchasing the "lifetime" plan of 2 TB. I've been satisfied with the uptime and reliability.
It has no native Linux support, but I went with iCloud because they offer a 50GB tier for $0.99/mo. They also offer 200GB for $2.99/mo. Everybody else seemed to have nothing in these ranges, expecting me to either make do with the free tier or spend ~$10/mo on way more cloud storage than I need.
My home server run Windows 10 so I had no problem serving up the iCloud Drive and Photos directories over SMB to access them from my Linux machines. Obviously this isn't practical for everyone.
Mega offers 50 GB for free. And they have a Linux desktop client, which for me personally is a must-have convenience. I've used it (free tier) for years now, without experiencing any downtime or other issues.
I'm not sure how comfortable I am with anything Kim Dotcom is involved in.
Understandable, but he hasn't been involved with the company for years.
Wait, what!?! Mega supports linux??? How did i not know that? i guess i'll be looking into Mega. Thanks for this info!
I’m curious if there’s a reason Dropbox didn’t make the cut? Maybe price? It’s well trodden, reliable, cross platform. Are there things that make it nonviable for you?
Yea, basically that. $120 a year is kinda steep for me. I'm much more comfortable spending $20 a year on Google One...except for the fact that I find the usability of Google Drive to be atrocious.
I know the upfront cost is pretty big, but consider the freedom of owning your own NAS. It feels amazing. I bought and built out a Synology 4 drive NAS and couldn't be happier. The software is easy to use and I have so much space for backups, media, and software.
+1 for pCloud working well.
I was initially a bit sceptical of their platform and business model (still am considering that they are still offering lifetime plan options) but ended up signing to their lifetime offer around 2-3 years ago now after doing the math and working out that it would only need it to stay alive and working for approx. 2-3 years for it to be value for money compared with the other options out there. Thankfully it has! Day to day it works exactly as OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox which are the others I have tried in the past.
No major issues with it at all actually apart from one thing: Periodically I like to do a hard drive backup of all my files and I have had some issues downloading them from pCloud when in large quantities. I have 173GB of data (not even that big by cloud standards) but I can only download up to ~30GB slices without receiving some error message along the way (can’t remember what exactly atm) and having to start over again (it won’t pick up from where it was last up to). Pretty sure this is a pCloud issue but it could be something to do with Windows too though. Haven’t had any success in troubleshooting it although it's not a deal-breaker for me.
If you're considering Wasabi, you should also consider Backblaze B2 and probably also S3 (though I'd recommend avoiding it for anti-monopolistic reasons; technically it's fine, though not the cheapest, but the shambling horror that is Amazon certainly doesn't need any more revenue). I'll also say that Wasabi's website copy really rubs me the wrong way. Anyone calling themselves "disruptive" that insistently certainly is not, and I'd worry about where they're cutting costs.
Personally, I use B2 for my offsite backups, and I'm very happy with it. However, you will have to do some manual work to provide a frontend. B2 provides an S3 compatibility layer you can use to integrate it with NextCloud, apparently, though I've never used it.
I have Office 365 because of Office, i am in favor of open source but Microsoft Office has been few of the suites that Microsoft still do right and Office files sync smoothly between devices.
This is such a touchy topic for me.
I currently subscribe to the lowest-priced home/family plan with microsoft which includes the office 365 suite which includes 1TB of storage for each user up to ( i think) 5 users...all for $99/year. I have little use for office 365 (i love me some libreoffice), and really only get this plan for the generous OneDrive storage allotment for my family...But microsoft's OneDrive-only plans (the ones without office 365 suite) seem pricey to me compared to their office 365 plans. Also, of course my daily driver is linux...which onedrive does not natively run on. Ugh! So, for my linux machine, i use the free tier of dropbox. Dropbox works decently enough on linux i guess, but I'd prefer more storage than the free tier provides. Looking at dropbox's current pricing, it is much better than i remember (https://www.dropbox.com/individual/plans-comparison) at $10/month for 2.5TB; but still a smidge higher than i would hope for. Maybe I'm cheap, i don't know...but none of the cloud storage providers - that work across both windows AND linux machines - seem worth their pricing to me.
I guess you you might consider trying the free tier of dropbox for your linux machine...and if it works for you, maybe consider the paid tier.
Actually, now that i think about it...you never noted how much storage you need...Is there minimum that you're looking for?
Honestly, the 100GB options would probably be more than enough for me. I wouldn't plan on using it for storing photos or videos. Mostly documents, I guess. I dunno. I just feel like I need a central repository for my stuff. I do like Dropbox the most out of the free storage options I've used so far (OneDrive, Google Drive) as I find it the easiest to use. It just shows up as a plain folder you can drag and drop stuff into, whereas those other options seem to muck around with weird abstractions. I'd be concerned with their lack of encryption, but that can be fixed with Cryptomator (I think). Mostly, I just find the idea of spending $120 for 2TB of storage that I can't imagine getting close to utilizing hard to justify. If they had a $40/year option for 500GB, or something, I'd probably go with that.
As i had noted, one of the main reasons i went with office 365 and OneDrive was mostly for the generous storage allotment..And, specifically, it was to have all my family photos (~170GB) accessible whenever my family and i needed (from any compuer/device that can connect to onedrive). But, i looked and i think we've only accessed the photos once or twice! The vast majority of access has been to docs, scanned in PDFs, etc...in other words, stuff that does not take up anywhere near as much storage as media like photos (or videos of course!). Now, thinking on things, maybe i can look into an alternative (either cheaper or open source so i can self-host?), since my experiment shows clearly that i may not need as much storage as i had originally thought.
Now looking at how much storage i really use, I'm right there with you...that would be the sweet spot for me!
Thanks for bringing up this topic, as it helped me reflect on my own needs. I now have a new, mini-project, but i have more options than in the past. Thanks and good luck with your storage quest! By all means, feel free to reach out if you wish to hash out other ways of thinking on storage needs!
If you want a syncing solution with an application I'd go with either OneDrive or Google Drive. Both have applications for Mobile + Desktop (both have non-official 3rd party linux apps as well) and decent web versions available. If you can live with just 100GB, I'd go with Google Drive for 1,99/month. Otherwise Office 365 (very often you can get a discounted code).
Since you also mentioned DYI, there's also Backblaze b2 out there but also provider like rsync.net (if you send them a message I believe they always respond with a better offer) or even hetzner. hetzner also offers a hosted/managed nextcloud solution. They're located in Germany/Finnland, not sure where you're located.
I've been looking at sync.com recently. Seems like a good all round solution with collaboration and sharing etc at a decent price and it has auto photo backup too so you can ditch Google Photos if you use it.
UPDATE 2
I found this service that ticks a whole lot of my personal checkmarks for a cloud-storage provider, and possibly yours, too!
Internxt
The only knock I have against it is that it's pretty new. Oh, and it seems that you have to pay with a credit card (which is weird as the only option, since they advertise being big on privacy). But, 20GB for ~$10USD a month is pretty nice (note: 2GB is provided free). And it's attractive! A lot of the cloud-storage providers have ugly and clumsy user-interfaces, but this one is pretty damn clean.
Anyway, just lettin y'all know it's there.
EDIT: Then again, maybe it sucks!
A few things about Keybase: it doesn't really work like Dropbox does, as until a few months ago you needed to be online to access your files (things changed recently, but I you still need to enable sync per folder with
keybase fs sync), and in my experience it struggles something fierce when dealing with a lot of small files. I had tried uploading about 1 GB of text files to it a year ago, and my laptop was still not done with it after 2+ hours at 66+°C.Personally, I moved away from cloud storage and just keep most things in sync across my devices by using Syncthings. It has its own issues - I often need to restart it to make two devices on the same LAN "see" each other - but it works well enough for what I need (keeping things in sync across phone and laptop(s) without having to bust out USB cables, USB sticks, or messing around with ad-hoc servers).
I'm pretty sure I might be biased.... but Wasabi looks interesting. I didn't even know I offered cloud storage. Thanks for sharing that.
Dr. WaSaBi