Dropbox or Google Drive?

[Steve Guttag]

I'm sure there are other cloud based storage/access companies out there but Dropbox and Google Drive seem to be the biggest and most entrenched.

Historically, I've much preferred Dropbox. Their implementation has been very smooth for me and the ability to get links to clients for downloads has been a breeze. Like most things, software companies feel the need to change things and now Dropbox has an extra layer such that when one accesses Dropbox on their computer, you now get their own version of Win10ish screen to sift through. Sure, you can click on the icon to go to your computer's normal navigation...but it is an extra step. All of this so we can favorite some folders?

Dropbox, overall, still probably wins for me but their new benefit actually took it down a peg for me. Give me the option to opt-out of the new thing in a configuration (note, if you have "favprotes
in windows" and the equivalent in Mac...you can still, with one click get to your Dropbox folder.

Google Drive...we'll it's part of the behemoth that is Google. It's update (syncing) seems less speedy than Dropbox and one has to get to the website to actually delete anything off of it...you can delete files but they just go to a trashcan that counts against your total storage...you have to actually go to the web, on your Google Drive and then empty the trash from there to get your space back.

What do you all use (if at all)?

[Frank Cox]

Do you have a webserver? If so, why not put files on that? It's a lot more private (look at .htaccess and .htpasswd for apache installations) and you can just give your customer a link to click on and he'll get the file directly without jumping through hoops.

[Scott Norwood]

For what purpose? Unless something has changed with either lately, there is no command-line interface to either Dropbox or Google Drive--both require a web browser with Javascript enabled as the user interface. This is truly annoying if I am on a low-bandwidth connection and want to copy something to a remote server, without first having to copy it to my local machine. The same applies if I want to upload something.

It has a steeper learning curve, but Amazon S3 works better for me for transferring files. I can use the AWS CLI or just wget or curl on the receiving end. "aws s3 sync" is a useful tool for copying an entire directory structure. The pricing structure is a bit convoluted, but it comes down to only having to pay for what you actually use in the way of data transfer and storage.

A personal web site or FTP site, as Frank mentioned, are also good options.

In a cinema context, I hate hate hate it when people put their DCPs on Dropbox (or something similar). Normally, I would want to copy the DCP to a server in the cloud with a high-bandwidth connection in order to run some validation tools on it before actually downloading it to my local machine. Unfortunately, Dropbox makes this difficult to impossible. Give me http/https or FTP links, please.

[Mike Blakesley]

I use Google for a lot of stuff... Drive, plus Sheets and Docs. I don't do a lot of file transfering -- more documents than anything, but I like that Docs and Sheets both save everything continuously, and I like being able to access my stuff from any of the various computers I need it on.

I do use Dropbox but not very often. Mostly to get stuff I receive from other Dropbox people.

[Marcel Birgelen]

We've decided to use our own file storage based on NextCloud. We host it ourselves, as we've got two fiber connections one 1G symmetrical and the other 500/500M, it isn't slower than being hosted in one of the big-boy clouds for almost all applications. Since we're using our own storage, we don't pay per month per terabyte, which ended up being a lot cheaper in the end.

We've got a backup of all the more relevant stuff in a datacenter, where we sync our stuff to. If stuff is down at the office, we can still pull files from there, if necessary. That being said, with two separate upstreams, the chance of both being down at the same time is pretty slim.

Google seems to be pretty robust regarding their "drives" offering, but I've had many problems with prolonged outages with public cloud services over the year. As we speak right now, we've lost access to our MS Office 365 environment hosted in Germany since 10pm last night...

[Steve Guttag]

For me, it is more than a mere FTP site...that is but one of the smaller benefits. It is also having a set of folders that follow me wherever I go and on whatever device I'm on (Computer, pad, phone...etc.). I keep my notes on various equipment there and any active projects so I'm not actively transferring files around or keeping up multiple ones. If it was just for FTP and long-term storage, that we would do on our own server.

[Marcel Birgelen]

NextCloud is essentially a full replacement for DropBox, it has clients for all your devices, including Android and iOS and can sync certain folders you want on all those devices. It also allows you to access stuff via FTP. We're running the appliance version on our VMWare environment since a few years now and the thing updates itself via a few clicks now and then. So far, it has been a mostly hassle-free environment.

Off course, if you want a "hands-off" approach where you don't have to manage your own server, then DropBox and Google are probably preferable choices. Personally, I'd go with Google, as their "Docs" integration is pretty strong, also, their availability seems to be among the highest in the industry. I've been using Office 365 for a year or two now for some projects, including OneDrive and I regularly face downtime or some weird issues preventing access to some of the features, which often last hours if not even days. All in all, the experience with Microsoft hasn't been very good.

Recently, I moved our primary e-mail back to our own premises, we still have some stuff running "in the cloud", but we're moving away from that where possible. We're also somewhat privacy minded, we use a lot of storage and I like the idea of having full control over our own data.

[Scott Norwood]

So, the use case is having easy access to multiple small(-ish) files on multiple devices for one or a few years? Not distributing files to the world (or vice versa)?

[Steve Guttag]

No...it's both. The file sizes vary from simple text files to largish manuals.

[Frank Cox]

I have my main desktop computer set up so I can log into it using ssh from any of my other computers or my phone or tablet. That way I can do everything from checking my email to getting stuff from my computer or putting stuff on my computer from anywhere that I happen to be. If it's on my computer it's available, but only to me.

For distributing files to someone other than just between my own devices, I put them on my webserver. I can post a public link on a webpage, email someone an "unlisted link", or put stuff in a directory protected by a .htaccess directive that requires the other guy to have a username and password to get at it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I just send them over to the recipient with one of the remote applications. Generally either Team Viewer or Ultra Viewer. I successfully sent an OS to a friend last week through Ultra Viewer.

Instructions for Ultra Viewer file transfer"
To send file, please following this instruction:
- While remote controlling your partner computer, press F1 to toggle the chat box on.
- Drag the file you want to send to the chat box and send a message.
- On your partner computer, click on Save button to save the file.

Mark

[Scott Norwood]

I'm not sure what to recommend if you need a tool for both your own use and for sharing stuff. I think that you're back to Dropbox vs. Google Drive, especially if you want support on mobile devices.

[Leo Enticknap]

I have a relatively low tech solution for providing large files to others: a consumer Buffalo NAS box, which has a built-in FTP server, connected to my home router. The router is configured to forward port 21 to the NAS box's LAN address, and whenever I want to give anyone a file, I give them a URL consisting of ftp://ftp.myexternalIPaddress/folder/filename.zip (or whatever). As there is nothing else on that NAS besides files that are there for a short time until the intended recipient has downloaded them, I'm not worried about the security aspects of this. The only gotcha is that occasionally, Frontier changes my external IP address (it's allocated by DHCP), so I have to check it every now and again to make sure that I've giving people the correct URL. But this avoids the need to ask people to register on a file sharing service, expose themselves to relentless ads, have a file sharing service reject something I upload thinking it's malware, etc. etc.

[David Ferguson]

Leo - you might want to look into a "Dynamic DNS" service - these automatically update the IP to domain whenever your IP address changes, so you don't have to manually check. Many good domain companies (such as Namecheap) offer a free service if you buy a domain through them.

[Steve Guttag]

With Google Drive or Dropbox...the person you give the link too need not sign up for anything. You give them a link that allows access to anyone with the link. You can give them access to just the file or a folder or as much as you desire/need. That is a minor part of my question though. Much of what I'm using them for is having a set of folders that are wherever I am and for "notes" that I only need to keep one set that again, are accessible by me from anywhere at any time and always current on whatever computer or device I'm on.