I’d like to set up something to share files with a couple friends who live across the country. Just a directory or 3, taking up maybe 15 gigs. I also wouldn’t mind, say, 5-15 gb cloud storage for backing up my files. Seems like the couple of cloud storage options I’ve seen offer much more storage than I want, and cost a bit more than I might like to pay.
I thought I’d ask here before trying some of the more tech-oriented forums. Any ideas on how to go about solving either issue?
Bittorrent Sync and Syncthing are free and let you share files and directories. One of those should take care of the first issue.
As for cloud storage, eg Amazon S3 advertise no minimum monthly fee, so you just pay for what you use. I’m sure people will chime in with a long list of cheap online backup services.
Google Drive will give you 15g for free.
My gmail acct has about 12 gigs of my old emails going back to when it first had open testing. That does not leave much for storage. Plus, I’m kind of annoyed with it from my experience with it so far. Admittedly, some of that was due to the lack of remaining storage, and still other issues were related to sharing dir with friends and finding that to be problematic. Perhaps if I used a new gmail address for nothing but storage, and didn’t share it, it would work better for me. Though, it does seem pretty slow in zipping up and downloading files.
The Amazon pricing seems somewhat reasonable, though confusing. I played with their service calculator. I haven’t checked out the syncing programs you’ve suggested yet, but I shall.
I’m trying SyncThing. We’ll see if my friend and I can get it set up. He’s normally sharper at this stuff than I am, but not right now.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Amazon also offers a service called glacier. If these files aren’t going to be accessed frequently, it can be pretty economic.
You are charged most for bandwidth going in and bandwidth going out, and little for actually just storing the files ($0.004 per gig currently)
There’s an app that works with it on my Synology NAS so it’s pretty simple to setup and it backs up everything on my designated folders automatically. have 1/2 a terabyte stored there and it costs me a little over $2 a month. As I mentioned actually storing, but especially retrieving data costs more, but you can always limit the rate to a free or low cost tier. The Synology app also accommodates this and sets up a backup schedule accordingly.
This solution won’t work for you if you plan on accessing these files frequently.
Amazon Prime also offers file storage, which is free for an unlimited number of pictures, but more for other types of files.
The dynamic would be along the lines of one file uploaded, one or two files downloaded. Couldn’t figure out Amazon’s pricing for my usage, which would probably be no more than 10gb at a time, and at most, 40gb UL and 80gb DL per month, probably more likely, half that.
Don’t have prime, not getting it. Sorry.
Thanks for your time and the info.
Oddly, I noticed SKY my broadband provider * in Britain offers free email, so I signed up mainly to stop others using my main nom-de-plume, and after I saw they offer One TB of storage.
Originally ‘unlimited’, but a terabyte is highly generous.
*Keep hold of your memories. You can store as many messages, photos and videos as you like.
*
Sky-Yahoo Email FAQ
Not likely to use it, but that’s nice to know.