Which personal cloud?

[antifunker 0]

So there's a few offerings, some of them new, some of them have been around for a while. The one's I know are:

 

WD Mycloud (I already have a myBook Live and it's a bit flakey)

 

Seagate Central

 

ZyXEL

 

Transporter

 

And then there's the routers which can have a drive attached to be configured as personal clouds.

 

I'd love to get people's feedback on what they think is good, or any options I've missed.

 

I've maxed out my Dropbox, and am looking at other options.

 

Cheers,

 

Ant

 

[Master_Scythe 535]

I didn't know you COULD max out a dropbox, normally you just increase your subscription;

What's their max?

 

 

I hate cloud storage. HDD's are cheap and private; but to each their own. I do use one for data DESIGNED to be shared.

 

Personally, I use SkyDrive as I find it the easiest to mark a file as 'public' and drop links on forums etc.

 

But if I was using personal storage, it'd have to be Google Drive.

Most people already trust them with their mail and contact details, online history, youtube comments and video watching; why not your documents?

They're bound to have the most redundancy and most strict backup regime, along with hopefully the best security.

Not to mention, features.

http://lifehacker.com/google-drive-can-now-open-files-directly-in-your-deskto-1655019365

Edited November 5, 2014 by Master_Scythe

[antifunker 0]

Sorry, to clarify, I want to move from having my data on somebody else's server, and have it on my home network on NAS, such as the example products I listed.

 

I'm an aussie expat in Dubai with a beefy fiber connection at home (unlimited data, fast upload speed) and am currently using WD Mycloud, but am looking for better options.

 

Cheers

Oh yeah to answer your comments:

 

I currently use dropbox to sync media files across multiple machines (in different countries) as well as secondary show backups for entertainment venues. I pay $100USD/ year for dropbox and only get 1Tb. Sadly, it's not enough.

[Master_Scythe 535]

Ahhhhh, this makes a lot more sense.

 

Your best bet is to actually sort out a NAS and access it externally.

Drobo's and QNAP's are big names, but personally, FreeNAS is the 'go to' for simplicity.

http://www.freenas.org/for-home/

 

There might be a learning curve to begin with, but you get a LOT of benefits.

 

You can have as many HDD's as you want, this includes something stupid like 10+ live\hot spares in case one, or five, goes down.

There really is no limit to how much storage you can have; unlike say, a QNAP with commonly 5 HDD bays.

You can share, encrypt and remote manage your entire server.

You can add additional 'daemons' to the server; for example, transcoding. So if you ended up somewhere with BAD internet, the server could stream it at 240p.

You can manage permissions, and give 'mates' a folder or some personal space to store their stuff too, while keeping yours private.

 

Assuming multimedia files; Assuming both your ends have a decent bandwidth speed; I've had great success with streaming over the internet via CIFS/SMB (which is the default 'windows file share', the same as when you share a fodler on a local network).

 

I use VLC and set a 10~20 second playback buffer, and never have an issue. The added benefit is that my 'cloud' if you want to call it that (it's not, since it's not distributed.... but the word is abused like hell), looks to my laptop like a normal shared drive, I can run and install programs there for all it cares!

 

 

I've always been a DIY guy, so now I know what you're after, I'm afraid I cant recommend a preconfigured 'Hard drive box' solution, because I havent tried any besides the QNAS, which worked, but what else can I say?

 

Hopefully you can find a good solution for yourself :)

keep us posted on what you do, and hopefully other members jump in to give some help.

[Ishta2000 1]

I use Freenas at home and its great. Have been running it for about a 8 months now and touch wood I have had no problems at all.

 

It is simple to setup with easy tutorials to follow. My recommendation is go larger then what you think you need so you don't have to upgrade the in future. EG: 4 x 2TB hard drives I would now do 2x4TB hard drive in some form of Raid.

[CptnChrysler 11]

Owncloud is worth a look.

 

http://owncloud.org/

[Master_Scythe 535]

I would now do 2x4TB hard drive in some form of Raid.

 

Nuh-uh, 3x4TB in RAID5. Gives you 8TB.

2x4TB in RAID1 would only give you 4.

[The Tick 56]

I have been using Owncloud for a while now and it's proven to be pretty nice.

 

I have installed to both CentOS and debian, both very simple.

[komuso 225]

Tonido? Works fine for me.