Tech - dropbox's new 3 device limit is terrible, what are some solutions? (1 Viewer)

[Redbot]

Dropbox has a new 3 device limit which isn't going to work for laptop hoarders like me.

My needs:
~20gb space
99.99999% uptime
Sync across 10+ devices
Linux/Windows/Android
Free or very cheap.

Things I've considered:

1) Owncloud, Resilio or similar self-hosted.
Pros: Tons of space, configurable
Cons: I'll be visiting my dad for a week and my cat will chew through the hdd cable.

2) Switch to Onedrive or Google Drive or whatever
Pros: Quick solution, easy transition
Cons: Other companies will probably introduce device limits if Dropbox's idea is successful.

3) Some sort of "cloud manager" 3rd party software to avoid Dropbox's device limits, like cloudmounter
Pros: No device limits
Cons: At least with cloudmounter I don't believe local storage is an option, which would make searching a pain and traveling without wifi impossible.

Any other ideas?

 

[kaen01]

https://www.sync.com/


been reading a review about them and they have all the bells and whistle that dropbox had, and then about 10x the security.

 

[MaxD]

I don't think google will do the device limit personally, also I don't think one drive will limit devices either because Microsoft's mission is more to get individual users to adopt them at the individual level so that their product is a "must" in the workplace its why they're not sticky on individual licensing for windows and such. Microsoft and google want the 100% market penetration.

Onedrive starts at 1.99 i think or if you actually pay for office (i know I know) you get it for 8 dollars a month (canadian, for the 8 dollars a month, I'm not sure on american pricing).

 

[Knightly]

I've never used sync, but I've read good reviews about it.

Over the years I've found Dropbox to have the best sync engine that "just works" and gives some flexibility in what I want to sync where. I had some problems with OneDrive not syncing properly and me needing a file only to find out the file wasn't the latest version. (I'm told this has been fixed and the engine is better now).

I've also used Google and I setup a self hosted solution just to test it out. The reality I ran into was that self hosted just wasn't cost effective unless you were already paying for space you don't use (which, why are you already paying for it if you don't use it) . Google had similar sync issues originally to OneDrive but makes a lot of sense if you already are a heavy Google user (gmail, etc) and has come a long way.

Still, Dropbox has a singular service that they provide and they're good at it. So, a few years ago I just bit the bullet and paid the $100 a year for Dropbox. At the time, I was like "but what about all the free space I've built up" and, honestly, considering how many times Dropbox has just made things easy on a new computer setup and how frequently I reload my computers...totally worth it.

 

[jamie75]

find a friends and family person at microsoft, i bought 5 years of office 365 for less than $100

 

[EQGuy1]

Worst case you could use a couple of the mentioned services and then use SyncToy to keep them all updated. It's easy and free. You also have some diversity in your storage platform in case one goes down.

 

[Redbot]

My short term solution:

I'm removing Dropbox from my phone & tablet, so I'll only use it on my 2 PCs & 1 laptop. When I need access to Dropbox files on my phone/tablet, I'll use Solid Explorer.

Long term:

When we finish the new RG updater, I'm going to treat myself to a NAS and host my own.

 

[playj]

I too hate the new 3 device limit on Dropbox. Why don't they offer a medium tier plan for those who are using less than 10GB?

One would think there would be a market for $50 yearly plans offering something like 100GB but I imagine Dropbox has done their research on people's habits.

Once you start paying for the 1TB plan you are basically locked in Dropbox forever.

Best pay alternative would be Office 365, you pay the same as Dropbox and get 5 seat Office sub for free..

As far as free goes:

I switched to sync.com two weeks ago ago.

Sync works great for my use case: (sharing scripts in various languages across multiple computers).

 

[Redfrog]

Does anyone keep their character kiss inis (or eq character hotbutton files) on some type of sync service? I use dropbox for storage sharing and video editing, and wonder if I can have my eq stuff in there for easy login and have my hot buttons and kiss inis easily available.

 

[Knightly]

I keep everything in Dropbox. The only issue is if you run on multiple computers at the same time then the kiss buff ini will end up creating conflicting copies. I just clear them out occasionally.

 

[Redfrog]

Knightly,
You keep Everquest folder and MQ2 folder in dropbox? I play on 2 comps at home and 1 at work. So what my dream is, that I could log easily on any toon from either 3 of those comps and have the same Kiss ini and EQ huttons and window setups. Is that possible or good to even do? also.. what if I wanted to add another comp, a notebook into the mix (which would have lower end graphics needs.)

 

[Knightly]

I don't keep my EQ folders in dropbox, but I junction all of the ini files so that my ini files sit in dropbox. Though, you could keep it all there.

For me, loot, hotbuttons, etc all sit in dropbox.

MQ2 I run directly out of dropbox. So all of my KISS stuff is sync'd across all my systems.

For this, though you can do it multiple ways, the command you want is MKLINK. Move your ini files some place safe (like, for me I have them in Dropbox\ini) and then MKLINK to that spot. As an example:
MKLINK "%EQGAMEDIR%\uifiles\default\MQUI_AdvPathWnd.xml" "%DROPBOXDIR%\UIFiles\MQUI_AdvPathWnd.xml" >nul 2>&1

%EQGAMEDIR% and %DROPBOXDIR% I made up, you'll want to fix those paths yourself. And that's a bad example because I believe brainiac just switched things so you can run the xmls out of your MQ2 directory instead of your EQ directory, but it serves my purpose. What that's saying is "Make a link in the EQ Directory that points to this file in the Dropbox directory." You can do that for all of your files and they'll sync from Dropbox.

For me I do:
charname_servername.ini
UI_charname_servername.ini
userdata\LF_AG_charname_servername.ini (etc -- these are all the loot files)
BZR_charname_servername.ini (I link this to one Bazaar_Servername.ini so prices are the same across all characters on that server)
notes.txt (just so I can sync everyone's notes)

I also junction a couple of directories. You can junction by:
MKLINK /j "%EQGAMEDIR%\uifiles\myui" "%DROPBOXDIR%\uifiles\myui" >nul 2>&1

What the above says is "Make a link in uifiles to a directory called myui that points to this directory in the Dropbox folder." You can do that for any specific directories and they'll sync from Dropbox. For those I just do the UI and my Maps so I don't have to keep them in sync across multiple systems.

 

[wired420]

I use one drive. I have a few office subscriptions I keep active for clients on contract. Contract mentions nothing about cloud storage and as most of them are law firms I also manage their internal servers anyways. Anyways between the yearly office365 subscriptions I've racked up about 12.5TB free on OneDrive lol

 

[onenexon]

I use a Synology NAS, works really well.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive