Why I Dropped Dropbox and got OwnCloud
dorktech.com > OwnCloud is basically Dropbox, without the data limits and pricing restrictions.
I switched to ownCloud for a while and then switched back to Dropbox. I switched back to Dropbox for a couple reasons.
First, ownCloud is written in PHP and the code (and the plugins you could add on) looked pretty janky. The UI was better than the usual open source fair, but still janky. Second, the trouble of having to worry about maintaining backups[1] for the ownCloud data store and server redundancy made the $10 a month I pay Dropbox look a lot more attractive again.
And finally, a lot of iOS apps integrate with Dropbox specifically. I didn't include this as an official third item, because fuck vendor lock-in, but it is nice to have when you're in a walled-garden environment like iOS.
In the end, I decided that I was better off overall sticking with Dropbox and doing a better job of encrypting particularly-sensitive data that resides there. Dropbox has had some security incidents and stability issues, but they've always responded to them in a manner I would consider sufficient.
I'm paying Dropbox for it's service (SaaS, after all), not it's storage. I'm paying them to worry about keeping things up and running. Not because I can't do it myself, but because I want to devote my limited time to other things.
1. Let me explain. I still do backups on the client side with a mix of Time Machine, CarbonCopyCloner, and tar. So my data's safe.
But I still need to worry about backing up the ownCloud instance, as well. Because if that gets munged up, I can't use ownCloud anymore without reinstalling and reconfiguring it. With Dropbox, they worry about the back end, so that I can focus on other things that I want to focus on.
OwnCloud + DO or Linode, and your backup problems are solved (more or less).
But then you are paying for the hosting and dealing with the maintenance. At that point is's easier to switch back to Dropbox. (IMHO)
It's better to host it in your own home. Everyone has an old computer with more storage space than you can ever afford from Dropbox. All you have to pay for is dynamic dns (which is useful in many other ways). "Maintenance" is a bad criticism. Use some stable distro and run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade once every couple of months.
> It's better to host it in your own home.
With the sterling reliability of the average residential ISP... For what it is worth, home runing is a viable option for many uses: I do run a server or two at home myself but important things are out in external DCs too.
> Everyone has an old computer with more storage space than you can ever afford from Dropbox
For transfers maybe, but are your really trusting an ancient box of parts long out of warranty with your long term storage?
> "Maintenance" is a bad criticism.
It isn't criticism (as it "this is bad and it is their fault because of how they've designed the product"), it is a perfectly valid concern when considering whether to run a service for yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.
> Use some stable distro and run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade once every couple of months
Remind me never to employ you as a sysadmin! There is (potentially) a lot more to it than that. what about setting up backups, monitoring those backups and testing those backups? What about connectivity: if you home connection goes down of you have a hardware failure while you are mobile who is going to fix it? If there is a fault with your physical line how long is it going to take to get people out to fix that?
You might not find those issues to be relevant to your (storage of and) access to your data, but to some people they are vitally important and need considering.
I'm actually planning to test an OwnCloud install for myself and family & friends, it looks like the feature set covers out needs quite nicely if it works well enough, but I can assure you I'm giving the above things all due consideration and I don't consider it "bad criticism" to do so (for my own data at least: friends and family will be told the service is free to use at their own risk!). I may even suggest we run an instance at work if my experiments with it go well, as we could use such a service but the nature of some of our data means that we can't trust it to 3rd party services.
For backup I just use Amazon Glacier (backups with http://docs.bakthat.io/en/latest/).
No one ever said a DIY solution was going to be as reliable as a proprietary service, just that the relatively low risk is worth it for your freedom. I personally would never use Dropbox since they don't open source their technology.
> For transfers maybe, but are your really trusting an ancient box of parts long out of warranty with your long term storage?
This is the one that always gets me. Failure becomes more likely over time. You just dumped your faith in a more failure prone box.
> Everyone has an old computer with more storage space than you can ever afford from Dropbox.
Weird definition of everyone, even in the HN reading crowd. Lot's of twenty-somethings have moved several times in a short amount of time, and tend to ditch the cruft. I know I did.
Then don't do it next time, your old laptop can live as a server for a good 5 years and will still be better than the VPSes you can afford by then.
or sell it while it has most of it's value as a laptop and pick up a VPS with a much better internet connection. Or a pi or whatever..
If your very first reason for not using ownCloud is "because it's written in PHP" then I'm probably not going to read the rest of your comment.
That's a shame, because you missed the qualifying remainder of that sentence, which that PHP isn't awful, but rather that the code looked janky. This makes me nervous when part of my mission is privacy. It should make your nervous, too.
Some of the 3rd party plugins, such as the Music extension (which was included with ownCloud 5) looks like a security nightmare.
PHP by itself has had some security problems, but combine that with poor programming practices and I avoid it. Again, especially when privacy and security is key. But, I get the impression that you're just here for a PHP battle, so I'll bow out.
> you missed the qualifying remainder of that sentence, which that PHP isn't awful, but rather that the code looked janky.
In which case there was no need to remark "because it's written in PHP" other than to appeal to the HN PHP sucks hivemind for upvotes.
> This makes me nervous when part of my mission is privacy.
Then you should not be using Dropbox. At all. At least owncloud is open source. Audit it yourself and patch any security hole you find if you really care about privacy.
> Some of the 3rd party plugins look like a security nightmare.
Disable them if you feel this way.
> PHP by itself has had some security problems, but combine that with poor programming practices and I avoid it
PHP has problems sure, but so does every language. I assume you're referring to owncloud (re. poor programming) as opposed to PHP as whole. Perhaps it is true, but at least with owncloud you have the option of fixing problems you notice, a luxury the closed source binary alternative does not offer you.
That's too bad. You missed out on some good points. Avoiding something because of the programming language can be a very reasonable decision. Personally, I could probably hack on some PHP if I really needed to, but I want to avoid putting myself in a position to need to do that. There are other options available that are better for me.
Parent might have made some good point, but this whole "PHP sucks" attitude is pretty juvenile. How can we have constructive discussion about some software if the knee jerk reaction this community has is "lol PHP, so shit"?
I'll take open source code over proprietary crap any day of the week.
It's a weird criticism given that Dropbox is proprietary, you can't modify it even if it is pristine code.
"OwnCloud is basically Dropbox, without the data limits and pricing restrictions.
The only catch is that you have to run and install OwnCloud on your own server"
Your own server which adds its own data limits and pricing restrictions.
> Your own server which adds its own data limits and pricing restrictions.
And potential reliability issues too. The storage infrastructure of something like dropbox will (or at least should) be massively redundant to reduce to near-zero the risk of people losing data due to hardware fault.
With something like OwnCloud you need to provide your own live redundancy and backups if your data is important enough to need them.
Having said that I'm looking at using OwnCloud for myself, and might suggest the group I work for use it too if my experiments with it show it to match out needs. But do be aware of what else services like dropbox provide that you need to manage and support yourself when replacing them with an in-house service.
True, but signing up with someone like OwnCube are cheaper than Dropbox - and if you really want it you can get SSH access (for sshfs) too ;)
> I have about 400GB of data backed up and synced between all my offices onto external drives at each location
I can't even get it to synch 100MB properly. I'm using ownCloud for about a year now and I run into issues all the time. Simply put a Git repo in your ownCloud folder and it will never stop synching.
I cannot find your github issue about that. Could you paste a link, if you managed to find 10 minutes of your precious time to post the reproduce-scenario during your 1 year long struggle?
It's been reported a at least once already, see[1]. However, I don't see why I am required to create an issue before I am allowed to complain. OwnCloud has tons of open issues on GitHub, I'm sure there are doing their best to solve them already.
Excuse the friendly jibe but you might consider dropping Hostgator next! I really respect and find valuable the idea of OwnCloud, but I have heard so many horror stories about files being deleted, slow sync times and bug fixes being secondary to the development of new features I have been put off. Has it now matured and can be considered more viable? I have been using BitTorrent Sync (with a Raspberry Pi as 24/7 server) personally and have experienced zero issues. I wish it was open source but it is great as an alternative to DropBox if 'owning your data' is important to you.
We implemented owncloud in our company of about 500 users spread out in 33 countries last year, and besides some minor glitches with some users ( mostly user errors ) the implementation has been very successful. our original purpose of owncloud was for people to have a backup of their working files in our server ( because they travel a lot and equipment loss rate is high ) but they are now using owncloud for file sharing and work collaboration...we use server version 5 with the latest client which right now is 1.5. some teams in our company were using dropbox, but now are using owncloud...I guess for security reasons.
One aspect that is overlooked here is the actual safety of your data. If you feel that your own server has the safety and backup resources of e.g. Amazon (which Dropbox uses), you're probably deluding yourself.
Backup is irrelevant, you can always encrypt it and send to S3. As for safety, well, at least you're a considerably less visible and worthy target than Dropbox. And you can implement systems (e.g., stronger authentication) that Dropbox might disregard since they're targeting a less technical user base.
Personally, I use git-annex as my sync server, and all non-local transmissions are done over SSH using public key authentication, which is something that Dropbox will never implement.
I'm not arguing that you can't have a private server that's secure. I'm arguing that setting up an OwnCloud box is probably more insecure than using Dropbox.
You can manage your own backups, and then you don't have to feel how safe your data is, you can know it.
If you aren't worrying about petabytes of data, you can run your own scheduled backup, take a copy off site, and test it regularly.
With Dropbox, you're right that they have more overall resources, but you also have no way to audit their processes. Other cloud services have lost people data. If you want to be secure in your data, you need a way to audit those processes, so you would need to do it yourself anyways.
If I know I have a known good backup in a fire resistant box off site, I know I'll have access to that data later. If I have data in Dropbox and then the next day it's gone and they don't return my inquiries, that's a possibility. Maybe they get shut down without warning for hosting copyrighted materials like megaupload. Maybe they have been cutting costs by gambling on the safety of your data. Maybe they get attacked and all of their online backups get destroyed, and they don't have an offline copy.
When I look at Dropbox's backup policy they tell me what is backed up, but they don't tell me how. I just have to trust them. But I really know nothing about them.
Dropbox overloked safety of data a lot.
FWIW your data isn't safe with Dropbox[1].
Amazon might have worse safety and backup resources that you might've been led to think.
Well, given that thousands of big companies use AWS, and millions of users rely on them, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Two points:
1) Dropbox has many thousands of their own servers, alongside the Amazon. It's not like they're just using raw S3 and nothing else.
2) Dropbox has a history of egregious mistakes which they try to sweep under the rug. Only a very silly person would believe that Arash has suddenly decided to be open and honest with the customers.
Remember, when you talk about Dropbox, you're talking about a company that flat-out lied, claiming that they encrypted your data so they couldn't read it, and didn't stop lying until the FTC got involved.
So yeah... when somebody says Dropbox is better than X, I tend to think that person is deluding themselves.
What's the source on your third paragraph? I want to read the backstory there.
Edit: Bias alert; I work for Dropbox on our infrastructure team. I'm just curious about that particular incident, since it predates me and I'm always curious about these things.
Dropbox's website used to say: All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES256) and are inaccessible without your account password.
This was changed to simply say that they are encrypted after this FTC complaint was filed: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/05/dropbo...
Luckily for them (and unluckily for consumers) they got away with that particular lie during the early years where it was most valuable.
There's also a fundamental problem that Arash doesn't understand security. This was clear after the incident where no password was required in order to login.
Arash claimed that this was only a problem if you were one of the unlucky few who was actually hacked. He didn't understand that a risk exposure is also a serious problem, even if you happen to dodge the bullet on that particular incident. In fact, he seemed to get quite angry with paying customers who were upset by it because in his mind you don't have the right to be even slightly bothered by a major screw-up unless you were affected that time.
I understand that at this point Dropbox is huge, so it's full of people like you who don't have anything to do with the customer-hostile bullshit that the founders did... but it's still impossible to trust anything you guys do. After all, when the CTO is untrustworthy, only a very, very naive person would trust the product as a whole.
I was also looking to host my own cloud service. I tried OwnCloud (2 weeks ago) and I was fascinated by it... Well until it failed me and lost my test data. There is a major bug in it (try renaming a directory by changing one letter from small to capital).
That being said, I started using BitTorrentSync which is a peer to peer sync and I am happy with it so far and I am still testing it.
How exactly does it (BitTorr..) sync data between my mobile & my laptop? If I have 100 Gigabytes of pics on my laptop. Will it attempt to copy it on my phone or does it cache a small portion? Does that need internet connection or will ad-hoc wifi work?
AFAIK, it'll try to copy it all. However, the practice is to separate content in a number of folders and sync only certain folders on certain devices. Slightly different approach than Dropbox, but works OK.
I've experienced the same bugs. Also using underscores, or asterisk breaks everything silently. No error or attempt to tell you not to do it.
I've been trying for days to get OwnCloud working properly with for my 30 person startup. I wish I could say it was going great but I'm a couple hours away from trying out DropBox for business.
I went with Ubuntu, 200GB EBS, M1X-large and the latest OwnCloud (6.0.1 stable)
Syncing has been brutal. We have a 100MB connection, and even the few test users I've put on it all are complaining of it not consistently syncing. Additionally there is no LAN Sync like Dropbox, so you're paying for all the bandwidth.
Since i't at somewhere between $250-300 for OwnCloud and it's been working so poorly, the $450/month for Dropbox isn't looking as bad.
It's a shame. There is good potential here, but as others mentioned the UI is really janky, and it doesn't consistently work as expected.
Have you considered the AeroFS (https://www.aerofs.com/pricing)? I have not used AeroFS, but it would be on my list to evaluate for your use case, especially if external storage is undesirable. Pricing seems in line with Dropbox for Business, although this does not take into account the cost of maintaining your own storage.
Getting hostgator HTTP 500. (why the fk in the world someone chooses hostgator as their error page) I am quite suprised how people are so successful at not handling Hacker News load? Even my $5 handled #1 on HN for hours with %0.1 CPU load.
Or you know, they could not care less.
Been there, done that, switched back to Dropbox. Dropbox has a very nice API that everybody has integration with.
I use owncloud, as a document repository for a non-profit. It replaces google drive for us. It doesn't see a ton of use but has worked well for us as a simple document archive.
I did like the fact that you can go into linux and find where the files are stored and back them up.
"ERROR 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"
Can't seem to get a cached version either.
Guess he should have stuck with dropbox.
Dropbox shuts you off if HN hits your URL, too.
I run OwnCloud on my Synology NAS at home. The Synology has got dynamic DNS and I have then CNAMED the synology.me address with cloud.mydomain.com. The sync client seems OK to me and I can access my files and contacts remotely. Everything goes over SSL with a free StartSSL cert.
I also use dropbox for work stuff that I don't care about from a privacy perspective.
Overall I'm happy with OwnCloud. Sadly they don't have an officially supported OwnCloud package for Synology, but you can have everything I guess.
I've been pretty happy with Space Monkey (http://spacemonkey.com) -- 1TB of local and remote backup, $199 for the device and free first year, remote backup $49 after the first year if you want to keep doing it.
And I have access to the full 1TB as if the files were local, even on my measly 120G macbook air, since the filesystem is backed by the network. It's kinda cool.
Next post: Why I dropped HostGator.com and got <xxxx>
Hitting #3 on Hacker News will murder any website which uses shared hosting. It happened to me with Dreamhost, and it got so bad that my website was irrevocably corrupted.
Needless to say, I switched away.
HN will definitely cause trouble for shared hosting, but I'd move away from HostGator because they're serving a giant ad for their own service on the 500 error page.
If you want to spend your time being your Owncloud admin use it. Security updates, finding reasons for Error 500 after updates and version upgrades - there's always something to do, you never will be bored.
If you just want a solution to sync data with your server use bittorrent sync.
Agreed on the janky-ness of it all. If you are switching to ownCloud because you want to control your date, I'd suggest Transporter.
I feel https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy-setup should have a special mention here since it looks more polished and stable than ownCloud.
Blocked by IT under the category of Pornography. Guess I'll read it later?
My guess a generic domain keyword block of "dork"? Remind me not to register a domain like that for my next must-have business app.
I have always felt that OwnCloud was just a personal "fun" alternative to great services like Dropbox. The DropBox business package, for the price, is not bad all in my own opinion.
If you install OwnCloud on one server, it's not a cloud, but just remote file storage. IMHO cloud implies redundancy and reliability, not just "on a server on the internet"
OwnCloud did not work for the needs of my friend and I. However, I absolutely love Seafile. It sallows for you to share files based on groups and folders.
I use Amazon EC2 and I can assure its not a feasible solution due to the bandwidth it will consume.
I just wish it wasn't written in PHP. Makes me not entirely trust it.
OwnCloud is jelly because DropBox just got that money.
Dropbox secure? A joke. One key to open all.
This is why you just upload a Truecrypt or similar volume for things that absolutely must be private.
Why I dropped Hostgator for anything else.
Just a quick smattering of thoughts:
You can get free DropBox space when you buy android tablets and phones. I think between a tablet and a htcone I scored like 500GB's at Dropbox.
Public cloud is not for sensitive data - its for transferring lame documents and media between places. Usually the people who are worried about security for data in public forums usually dont actually have any data anyone wants to steal.
OwnCloud got Pwned
What do you mean?
I think he means their site is currently crawling under the load - I can't get the home page to come up.