Ever wonder why Box gives away so much storage?

[kigmatzomat]

serious question: why are some folks saying box has syncing issues? i've never had a problem in the least....what am i missing?

I never had a problem with box until I got a new laptop and tried to migrate from the old one. First off, the new box software for Windows doesn't support custom locations without editing registry keys. I have an ssd for my os and cache and a bigger spinning disk for data, which is where I want box. Took me three installs before I figured out what happened and then got the right sequence of events to work.

Then I had 45GB of data to migrate. It was all on the old laptop and my NAS but could I copy the files over? Nope. I either had to re upload them or re download them. All the local copies got renamed and duplicated. Ugh. Over DSL that takes weeks.

Dropbox, however, just did a scan of the folders, calculated a bunch of hashes and said all was good. I could have used the lan sync to migrate the data but it was already on the disk from where I copied all my data over, not just my cloud data.

I haven't tried gdrive but one of the things I try will be to synch some data, uninstall the client, and see if it will recognize the data on my laptop is a match our if it will require it all to be reloaded from the cloud.

 

[kigmatzomat]

So google drive is a bust too. I installed it, uploaded 100MB of files, then disconnected my account. When I reconnected, it complained that the gdrive folder wasn't empty. So I moved the files out, finished the setup, and then put them back. Google drive then redownloaded my files and put a (1) at the end of them. Which means if my computer implodes, or I just buy a new one, to get my 46GB of cloud data synched, I'll need almost several days over DSL to resync Gdrive. Or about an hour for Dropbox to sync up with the data I copy from my NAS.

So Dropbox is still the winner IMO as the best all purpose cloud service based on the fact that you can restore from backups and/or external storage to a clean machine without re-transmitting all that data through the internet.

If you don't bother to keep any local backups then Box and Gdrive are ok. Gdrive was easier to set up custom folders than Box.

 

[Vsweety]

I've got a 61 GB Dropbox account. 5 GB free, 6 GB from referrals, and a couple months ago I suddenly got 50 GB extra. For some vague reason I couldn't make heads or tails of. I'm not complaining, obviously.

And yes, Dropbox is the most convenient and best polished of the personal clouds, imo. Works like a charm.

However, Dropbox ? like Box ? resides under US jurisdiction. This means that we have to assume that the contents of our Dropboxes are tightly monitored and stored by the NSA. (They even tap Congress' computers, for crying out loud!). This makes Dropbox unfit for storage of stuff that we don't want big brother to have access to or even know about. It's called privacy.

So apart from this Dropbox I also have 2 free accounts at MEGA. Not in US jurisdiction (New Zealand), 50 GB free each, with end-to-end encryption so that no big brother, and not even MEGA, has access to my stuff stored there. Only me! Accessible on all PCs and Macs using a normal web browser, no software installation required. And with excellent free apps for Android and [URL="https://itunes.apple.com/app/mega/id706857885?at=10l3Vy]iOS[/URL].

+1 for Mega.

 

[JeffDenver]

Last time I attempted to use Dropbox and Box, I was limited to the size of the file I can upload. I use Mega now because it has no hard limit on file size and the app is really nice with autosync.

Yeah I think Box has a 250MB limit still. That's a lot, but you can't store CD images or movies on it.

I don't think Dropbox has limits anymore though (not that it matters since their free cap is so low).

 

[kigmatzomat]

Last I saw mega hadn't released source code or a good description of their approach that didn't have potential problems. If you are concerned, get an app like boxcrypt. You can at least test the strength of the encrypted files yourself.

Personally I would like to see an app that uses encrypted zip files with the file hash in the public metadata. That would enable sync without cracking the zip and would maximize bandwidth and cloud storage. Imo the reduced transmission times would compensate for the decompression times.

 

[tube517]

I won't lie. I use Dropbox, Box, Drive, OneDrive, Copy.

I think I reached my limit of any additional cloud services, though.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I've got accounts on all of them but I really only want two and the second one really just needs to be a backup. Dropbox covers my "primary" cloud needs; with lots of app integration, multi-device/multi-platform support, more tools/features than I need, and does a great job of managing the data sync (including knowing when a sync isn't needed).

My secondary could throw most of that out the window, as long as I could get to it when I needed to and it had as good data sync management as Dropbox, even if it was limited to a single workstation. So far, I have found that. Well, I haven't found it outside of S3 support in my NAS, but since those are the same data centers as Dropbox, it fails the requirement to be a backup to Dropbox since both could go down at the same time. Carbonite is a maybe, but it's more expensive to support a NAS, which I got to avoid having to run a PC as a file server and I'm hesitant to go back down that road.

I'm tempted by the "CloudGoo" app but without a desktop client, I really don't want to rely on my android phone or tablet to manage large volumes of data.

Sigh. At this point I'm just venting my spleen about how Dropbox really doesn't have a competitor when it comes to the quality of their data sync management.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I tried mediafire and have a winner. I used a 200mb sample file set, uninstalled the app from my pc, restarted, reinstalled, and it just happily calculated some hashes and accepted the files without a lengthy fownload. And at $60/yr for 1TB it is a definite winner on price. Dropbox still has more apps but redundancy is good.

Think I will also try the $1/yr for 50+50GB on idrive. Not 100% sure what the difference between backup and sync space is but I can toss them $10 for a decade of service. They'll probably go out of businesss in 5 but still, $10!