All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
I'm slowly going to move away from self hosting for my storage needs - you?
After many years of self hosting pretty much everything I need for storage, I bought a good storage solution deal last BF. It's the proton drive 1 TB drive. What I hate is that the price is only for the first year, after that the price is back to normal. I thought I would buy it just to try it out and use it as a secondary service for dumb things I want to store online. But it actually works pretty well. it is pretty fast and I 'feel' it is relatively secure. So why the heck should I deal with my own storage solution(s)? I would not be saving that much per year, and I would have to be vigilant about making sure it's secure and up to date if it was my setup. Basically, i feel like I bought time. I traded money for the work I would have done, and when you put that all together, it's probably cheaper. If I charged myself my hourly rate and had to pay for it, then I am saving a LOT. OK, so I have to get used to different apps and it's not as customizable, or as much fun as me tweaking things, but it works.
What do you think?
Comments
Can you give some examples of what kind of work does it saves you? The updates?
Depends on the needs, but things like proton drive are far too limited for any serious work.
Mostly tweaking and moving from one provider to another each time I find a new deal. When it's under my complete control, I just love to look under the hood. I'm like that with my car, but If I take an Uber or cab, who cares as long as I get from point A to point B safely.
Realistically, I'll probably miss the getting under the hood and adding things to do it long time, but I am going to give it a 1 month try to see how realistic it is, and how it compares.
Hahah
Well tbh, I feel safer when I drive, if you know what I mean. I think in your case is more like you save time because you have no way to tweak their code
If you could, it would be the same or worse.
Isn't that part of the fun for you though? Well I guess you are finding it less fun.
That's why I selfhost, I just enjoy doing DIY stuff and learning things, plus I feel like I'm in control a lot more than just accepting the 'normal paid products'. It's like buying a supermarket cake or baking my own, my own feels a whole of a lot better even if it might be less tasty
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I was really looking forward to getting a 1TB storage box from @host_c , but I didn’t manage to buy it. So now, I think I’ll just pay for a smaller storage plan on Oracle Cloud. It feels like my approach to the need has shifted back to a more practical perspective of just getting exactly what I need.
Does proton drivea llow you to sync/backup files/folders scattered in multiple places without the need to put everything in one single folder?
I still self host using Seafile, simply because it can sync any folder anywhere on your computer, not only the content in its own folder. I've been on the lookout for such paid services for quite some time but no avail; Onedrive/google drive/dropbox only sync content in their own folders, or some specific folders such as Documents, which just doesn't work for me..
Actually, to my understanding it does. I haven't tried it yet, but when I was looking into it, that is one of the things I looked for and it said somewhere in the docs that it does, at least in their Windows App.
That would be awesome; thanks for the info.
Where in the docs?
Well, I'm the years-ago-you. I'm just learning how to self-host for my storage needs...
Now I use OneDrive from M365, and also sync it to my home NAS.
So I have my files on my own laptop, home NAS, and cloud.
Online cloud storage is more of a series of "what if" issues rather than cost / convenience to me. So i try to have some control over infra as much as possible so i can know i have a copy which cannot be deleted / denied access by a person / ai arbitrarily. cloud services are secure only until your access is revoked / service is down. There is no guarantee beyond the fancy marketing from the brand.
So my local devices get synced with a UNRAID server on my local network which generally sleeps for most of the day but wakes up to sync with servers and phone / laptop etc and pushes a encrypted copy to my koofr (1TB at 100$ lifetime acc ) and then goes to sleep. I used to run this server 24/7 but to save on power put that to sleep and wake up as required.
apart from this servers sync themselves to backup servers like a hostbrr /servarica backup storage etc., directadmin server/reseller push backup to another directadmin server as a hot backup which can be pushed online and dns entries updated by the DR monitor script which looks for downtime etc.,
mailstore home works good to archive mail accounts pushed to the above backups. foldersync is a good product to sync your phones to your local/cloud backups..
and as always, to everyone their own/// whatever works for you and can be managed well is the best
Some people view it as a hobby project and have fun building and maintaining their own "service"
Other people don't trust proprietary cloud providers, even if they are located in Swiss, better than the US, sure, but not much better
If above 2 points are no big deal for you, just go with iCloud if you own Apple devices or OneDrive if you own Windows devices. No need to thank me for the time you save and the convenience you get. I hate installing 3rd party proprietary software on my devices (e.g. Proton, Dropbox etc, I simply use iCloud, OneDrive, SMB, Syncthing,... depending on the situation)
I'm up to 120TB in my scrappy little homelab now. Updates and backups (of the important stuff) are all automated, so I barely have to do much maintenance at all. If the drives only end up lasting 5 years, they would've cost me $26 a month (excluding power/hw/bw).
I still do everything myself except for reading mail.
Back in 2007 I used to self-host a mail server on a 32MB NSLU2 (1) under my stairs and while I was on holiday in New Zealand, with a month of holiday left to go (and over Christmas and New Year), the drive failed. I hastily signed up for Google Mail, switched my MX records to a friend's VM and forwarded all my mail to Google. When I came back, I realised that the web client was actually far more useful than having Thunderbird on lots of different machines, all with different ideas of my mail, and I just stuck with using it.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2
I wrote this is another thread few days back
My wife hated me for making her move from google photos to nextcloud bcoz almost nothing worked in NC photos. It was just all so bad & on the top I had to get 2x 2TB vps from different providers (one for backup) . With the going rate it almost totaled to $90 for 2 TB of storage. Amazingly I found Google one's 2TB at a promotional rate of ≈ $37 for 2TB (I don't even have to keep an extra backup with them). I felt like a fool for all the work I had put in for nothing. I think nextcloud and other self hosted solutions suit ppl with much bigger storage needs like in excess of tens of terabytes where Google or proton solutions are more expensive? Otherwise it's just an utter waste of time and resources spent for something that will never be as good as propeitary solutions.
Isn't data ownership in times when everything is being scrapped for training of the AI models a consideration for self-hosting?
What issues do people have with anonymous use of data for training AI? Honestly curious
I have the same journey last year when i started thinking that i spent too much money on self-hosted solutions like 2 Syncthing node with 1-2 Backup of backup.
So i tested a cloud provider for like a month or so, but the provider i went with was OneDrive. And thats the worst choice i’ve ever made, their UX sucks, even on windows just to sync a folder required me to do the workarounds and i didn’t even talking about how incompetent their app on Android was. I can just sync photos/video and some file type to Onedrive this made onedrive nearly to even possible to use without a third-party app on mobile. I can stand them just a week before i went back to my beloved self-hosted syncthing that loves eating my phone battery and very pain to maintenance.
I might try it again this year, but dk which provider i should went with now that have decent Linux compatibility.
This thread is just in time for my inner thinking during this BF/CM period as I snagged storage deals (2x1Tb + 1x500Gb + 1x250Gb) on top of what I already have (koofr 1Tb LT). Tbh until now I still trusted koofr much more than my self hosted backup on vps. Because I trust that my data/backup on koofr will never be gone. On the other hand, I've to deal with corrupted data (happened once) and lots of downtimes (with different providers). Still trying to strike a balance.
Don't get me wrong, I love DIY things and also self hosted is truly a fun journey. I'm still doing it right now, self hosting owncloud on a storage vps (how about that lol). The moral of the story about vps is to find a least downtime of all providers that I bought vps from and that takes time. Also I kind of don't do HA/redundancy for my self hosted stuff because it cost more so my only hope is that the providers won't go MIA out of the blue.
But hey this is just my 2nd year into self hosting so I guess I'm still at the honeymoon period and enjoying the most out of it. Who knows few more years down the road I will be like OP and takes a step back...
Seafile has an interesting take with libraries acting as parent folders. But it was a disaster for me, multiple things has failed to work out of the box and it takes me days to fix all the issues (basically thumbnail issue for some image extensions and videos) and after I finally thought everything is fixed in web UI...I discovered the thumbnail issue on mobile/Android app (v3.0.6) and this time I feel enough is enough. Also the uploaded files via web UI has not preserve the original modified datetime of the files.
I've resorted to owncloud, which solves all issues mentioned above. Peace.
Really depends on the type of storage…
Photos: lifetime unlimited google photos via pixel 1
ISOs: tiered nvme vps -> storage vps -> home server
Backups: Cheap online storage (1fichier) and/or friend’s home server
General/documents: syncthing
I do try to mentally make a 10 year plan with any self hosting, anything not set+forget is a no go, unless there is a strong privacy argument (email)
Major difference between self hosted and for example gdrive is the fear. The fear that if you dare to upload precious data to self hosted solution on low end provider flops - you will loose everything. Gdrive - never happens. That’s all. Maintenance is not an issue, few pills of modafinil and all servers updated.
It's all about what works best for you, and if that means trading some customization for efficiency, then you've made a smart choice.
(for me) it's the same as giving all my private data to a random person I met on the street who dosen't know me. It probably won't do me any harm but in no way in hell am i consenting to it. It feels dirty.
Are they safe? They have been around for a long time, but their reputation is so so.
They are Legit, they are heavy used Warez world.
Are they safe tho? Not 100% sure, but they have been around a long time. I would image your data would stay up/around if you pay. As always if you don't trust a file host you should encrypt then send or self host.
That's how I feel after a year of finding and trying out self-hosted storage. I pay with my time during trial and error, which is sometimes fun, but mostly not.
I'm back to cloud storage and hard drives with encryption, of course.
I would rather pay for something important with money than with my precious time, which I can use for other things.
Their reputation is "so so" because of how much that site is used for distributing pirated games(and software too?).
I use Google Drive to sync various folders, just go into preferences and add whatever folders you like. I am pretty sure Onedrive has similar functionality but it's been a while since I tried it so don't take my word for it.