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I mean, yes, but that goes for self-hosting in general, no?
You pay with your time.
If you like the experience it's worth it.
If you make a decent living and you don't enjoy it, it's hardly worth it.
Generally.
I always traumatic after google suspend my account for other problem than storage.
Its worth for me cause its on same space as some small self-hosted application I do, and can open it offline on network home and public internet via reverse proxy VPS.
Save money I got from self-hosted just going back to my hobby doing this, so this never ending learning investment for me.
or maybe I just happy doing it for almost decade, i dont know.
You can still selfhost and pay a bit and use synology and their photo app it quite nice (face recognizition, android app, etc) or go with immich but I found that synology just works. Then backup everything in different storage vps with their app using Minio.
Thanks man. Just tried Google Drive and indeed I can sync from anywhere on my computer now. Maybe time for me to move to Google Drive.
Onedrive still doesn't have this feature; only allows syncing from its own folder, or specific folders such as "Documents".
Did you install the community version or the Pro version (free for 3 users)? Never had a problem with thumbnail (I only have .png/.gif/.jpg/.tif; can't tell for other formats)..
I always went the self-hosting route and, for diverse reasons, some (IMO) critical, some more personal point of view, will continue to go that route.
Just 1 "small" but venomous example: .xz files. When that hit I could have simply changed compression or container format myself and very quickly. Also scanning all .xz files I happened to have and moving them over to another format would have been something I (a) could do at all (unlike with a service provider), and (b) keep it under my control, and (c) wouldn't need to trust some service provider or code or whatever.
Note: that's a theoretical example as I do not use .xz (I happen to be very picky, maybe even anal wrt compression and containers).
Besides it would feel very weird to me, not to apply all my knowledge and expertise, which also translates to "usually things get done fast and with little effort".
Final point: Google? AWS? Azure? Some big service provider who knows where and who know which jurisdiction? Thanks, no, definitely no.
I have similar experience, both google drive and dropbox nuked my accounts because it has paid fonts that i need to backup (unfortunately i only place them inside zip file).
there was time when i locally encrypt my backup first using cryptomator, but then google constantly harassing me have to do re-log in and sms verification because the account is "suspended for suspicious activity". yeah nope, not dealing with that. I'm content using storage VPS to store my backups. the only 'cloud' provider that i uses are backblaze personal, but inside container.
you sound well paid.
Hell no.
Should be enough of a lesson on why you should store your own files.
Great question! Should you self-host or rent storage? (I hope I understood your question correctly.) The answer really depends on the nature of your data, how critical it is, and your budget for hardware, as that's often the biggest factor.
Self-hosting can be straightforward if you're just starting out. For example, getting a 2-bay NAS these days is relatively easy, with plenty of consumer-grade options. Adding two SATA drives, setting up a mirrored RAID for redundancy—simple, right? But here's the catch: while this setup works most of the time, consumer-grade solutions can have their downsides. For instance, a software RAID failure or an OS glitch could leave you with two empty drives after a reboot. That’s a risk I wouldn’t take, not even with non-critical data.
On the flip side, renting storage from established providers can offer significant advantages, especially if you opt for premium services. These providers typically use enterprise-grade hardware like SAS drives and advanced redundancy mechanisms, which provide better data safety and endurance. Of course, you’re trusting them with your data It’s a trade-off.
If you're looking for a more robust self-hosted solution, I’d recommend a 4-bay HP MicroServer (or something similar). The HP Gen8 is a great example: pair it with a low-end Xeon processor, 32GB of ECC RAM (both affordable on eBay), and an SSD for the OS (in place of the optical drive). Add four SAS drives with an HBA card, and you’ve got yourself an excellent storage unit. Running FreeNAS (or any OS that supports ZFS), I’d stick with RAID10 for reliability. This setup is something I trust entirely—I even have a few in operation myself.
What I’d absolutely avoid is any setup using RAID5 or relying on consumer-grade NAS boxes for critical data. They’re just not built for the long haul or high reliability.
That said, whether you’re willing to spend the hours setting up and experimenting with this is entirely up to you. If you don’t have the time, renting is likely the better option.
One more thing: even enterprise-grade setups can fail. RAID, whether software or hardware, is not a substitute for a proper backup. A good approach might be self-hosting paired with an offsite, budget-friendly backup solution. It strikes a balance between control, reliability, and peace of mind.
EDIT:
I will ad one more thing, If it's too good to be true, it probably is
I am moving to my home server setup with HP 420 , have few nvme, ssd, hdd. Bought a cheap vps in same city i live in for wireguard. Workstation would burn electricity but already invested them for work, now using them. Increased home broadband to 200 mbps speed.
Will rent dedis Or vps per hour for job. Else limiting to home system going further.
I moved away from self hosting completely not only storage.
What you doing here then?
I still use it business wise for my own saas, but all other data is migrated to the cloud.
makes sense!
I use it a lot to storage my audiobooks (using audiobookshelf).
1TB is a tiny amount... I compress my data heavily and still go above 6TB in my current setup. While I don't care all that much about data ownership, you still must encrypt and have multiple copies in other places for redundancy anyway, most cloud storage providers don't work all that well with rclone. The main problem is that every single service either has major annoyances or forces extreme rate limiting compared to the self-hosted solutions when using rclone, we're talking "4 concurrent uploads vs 100", very often it's both.
But if data hoarding isn't your hobby and you don't think you'd exceed 1TB any time soon, then of course, I can see the appeal of Proton Drive. After all, not everyone wants to bother with cherishing your rclone config and using the terminal / command prompt to access your data. Often you just want to open the browser on any device and work with your data sanely, and that's totally okay.