28 comments

  • adamgordonbell 0 minutes ago
    Looks great. Feature request: Google Drive for desktop. The feature that gives you your drive as a mounted file system stream files as you need them. It gives me the ease of having access to a giant amount of files stored in my gdrive without having to worry about the space they take up locally nor moving files up and down.

    Actually, what solutions to that might already exist? I don't really use the web UI of gdrive as much as use it as a cloud disk drive.

  • kristianc 1 hour ago
    We've officially come full circle

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

    • giancarlostoro 2 minutes ago
      To be fair, I can't remember the last time I needed Dropbox or Google Drive, but I do use iCloud, since it comes with plenty of storage for my family plan. I don't send anyone files like back in the day where people would send me a Dropbox link and I'd send them one back.
    • ryangittins 54 minutes ago
      Hah, wow. A post with an ID under 10k. Meanwhile this one is over 47M.

      I didn't realize I've been reading HN nearly its whole existence. For all my complaining about what's happened to the internet since those days, HN has managed to stay high quality without compromising.

      • bitexploder 18 minutes ago
        At least, here the biases are well known. I have been here since the beginning as well. :)
      • giarc 16 minutes ago
        I think a big reason is you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It reduces heated back and forth arguments.
        • ryangittins 8 minutes ago
          Interesting, I hadn't considered that! You're probably right.
    • bitexploder 20 minutes ago
      Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
    • freedomben 15 minutes ago
      at the risk of a comment that doesn't age well, for most people on HN I would definitely look into just using rclone. I also has a GUI for people who want that. rclone is mind-blowingly good. You can set up client-side encryption (so object storage never sees the data or even the filename) to be seamless. I'm a huge fan
    • PunchyHamster 39 minutes ago
      this is cloud to different cloud thing not physical to cloud thing tho
  • dewey 1 hour ago
    The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced.

    So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

    • Tepix 1 hour ago
      On the other hand when a Dropbox user shares a file with you these days, the nudges have so gotten out of hand that it's a pain to use.
    • throwaway5465 44 minutes ago
      We can just all use rsync, no need for an app.
      • nickjj 21 minutes ago
        Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive.

        I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of your backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time. It's 1 shell script with no dependencies except rsync.

        Nothing leaves my local network since it's all local file transfers.

      • bitexploder 16 minutes ago
        Until I want to share with say… anyone that isn’t on HN :)
    • dangus 14 minutes ago
      To me, integration with the Apple files app on iOS is critical for any Dropbox replacement (among other things).
    • ajsnigrutin 45 minutes ago
      https://syncthing.net/ <- like this :)

      Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast).

      No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync!

      (not affiliated, just really love the software)

      • mleo 16 minutes ago
        This is my go to solution for code sync across macOS laptop, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs to build and run/debug across environments. Unless something has changed, exclusions of build artifacts was always an issue with cloud sync providers. I have been doing more cross compilation on macOS, copy and run on those other machines lately for prototypes, but for IDE based debugging it’s great to edit local or remote and get it all synced to the machine to run it in seconds.
    • CAmosisKilduff 1 hour ago
      Isn't that the scenario for Nextcloud?
    • whalesalad 52 minutes ago
      Yep. Open source Dropbox is really Nextcloud - https://nextcloud.com
      • pbouda 0 minutes ago
        I use OpenCloud nowadays https://opencloud.eu and can really recommend it. It was easy to install on a VM and uses S3 for storage. No database needed.
      • PunchyHamster 38 minutes ago
        Given how many fuckups sync had over lifetime of it (at one point it basically asked for re-log every day, at other it just corrupted data/didn't finish sync), no
  • ovaistariq 26 minutes ago
    The critical part of Dropbox is not just the storage layer but a combination of their client and server. Even small things like how do you handle conflicting writes to the same file from multiple threads, matter a great deal for data consistency and durability.
    • dangus 15 minutes ago
      A lot of the backend bucket providers can handle file versioning.

      I too would like the answer to this concern because the features page doesn’t mention it. I want to be able to handle file version history.

      I’m currently using Filen which I find very reasonable and, critically, it has a Linux client. But I wish it was faster and I wish the local file explorer integration was more like Dropbox where it is seamless to the OS rather than the current setup where you mount a network share.

  • filleokus 1 hour ago
    Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage.

    1 TB is roughly 20-30 USD per month at AWS/GCP only in storage, plus traffic and operations. R2 is slightly cheaper and includes traffic.

    Compared to e.g a Google AI plan where you get 5 TB storage for the same price (25 USD/month) + Gemini Pro thrown in.

    • nhumrich 2 minutes ago
      Backblaze is a lot more affordable
  • 1a527dd5 1 hour ago
    Absolutely not. The value isn't in the cloud storage. The value is in the client (DropBox in my case) seamlessly working across all my devices.
  • rkagerer 31 minutes ago
    Why would I want to replace my reliance on them with reliance on Amazon or another cloud provider?

    I'd rather control the whole stack, even if it means deploying my own hardware to one or more redundant, off-site locations.

    Edit: Are there robust, open source, self-hosted, S3-compliant engines out there reliable and performant enough to be the backend for this?

  • ks2048 44 minutes ago
    I pay Dropbox $120 per year for 2TB. No transfer fees, solid Apps, macOS integration, free APIs.

    How much on S3? A LOT more.

    • scolson 38 minutes ago
      I think the idea is any s3 compatible api endpoint can be used. The code also clearly supports both backblaze, and more importantly, local blob storage
    • hvb2 15 minutes ago
      Just saying, but this is not really fair. It's not like you use that 2TB. So you shouldn't compare it to a 2TB bucket. Most of these plans have limits to prevent abuse but they're well beyond the 'I need to care' level.

      Maybe you use 1TB, maybe just 10GB. As a user on this site I expect you know that a 10GB plan and a 1TB plan won't be that much different.

      • hidelooktropic 9 minutes ago
        I don't know what you're talking about. I always reserve right up to the knife's edge of what I actually use.
  • gargan 36 minutes ago
    May I recommend the excellent https://s3drive.app/ which is compatible with S3 and also providers like Proton Drive
  • vgr-land 1 hour ago
    Looks like a good light weight solution to front object storage with a front end and auth. One suggestion is to add the license to the repo. The readme says License: MIT, but there’s no license file.
  • npodbielski 1 hour ago
    I bought 35$/mo 16TB server from OVH. I am running 2 replicas of Garage, one on this server. I am using this for backup for now but probably I will also move my Nextcloud files there and websites. This is fine for now and less pricey than any S3 provider I was able to find.
    • chirau 54 minutes ago
      Honest question, what do you need/use 16TB for? 4K video?
      • whalesalad 51 minutes ago
        Lots of files with 2160p.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.DV.HDR.H.265-FLUX[TGx] in the name.
        • weberer 39 minutes ago
          Back in my day, we downloaded 20mb episodes of Naruto in .rmvb format and liked it. Uphill!
  • pluc 1 hour ago
    I'd love a local offline alternative, maybe I'll get AI to build it for me
    • dwedge 1 hour ago
      Not trying to be snarky but what is offline dropbox more than a directory?
      • atrus 1 hour ago
        Syncthing? I'm taking 'offline' to mean 'not requiring the internet', which means you can have plenty of computers!
        • pprotas 40 minutes ago
          Samba share?

          Old technology still works, even if it is old!

          • axelthegerman 26 minutes ago
            Works so great on new devices like smartphones. Except not.

            And so easy to set up on a home computer. Except it's not always on and doesn't come with backups.

            I'm not saying S3 is where it's at but might need a bit more than just Samba. Or maybe you don't but people who need Dropbox do.

            • pprotas 4 minutes ago
              iOS has native support for SMB in the Files app

              Turning on SMB is usually just a click of a button, even macOS supports it

              Any user technical enough to be able to set up an S3 bucket, Syncthing, Nextcloud or this "Locker" tool from OP can also set up an SMB share

              I was responding to the above thread, where sharing files on an offline network is being discussed. Backups were not mentioned as a requirement.

  • bovermyer 53 minutes ago
    Very cool idea, but without background file syncing from/to my local machine, it can't replace my cloud storage provider.
  • vitalscope 41 minutes ago
    That is a bit like saying “Don’t use a medical analysis app, just interpret your lab results yourself.”

    Sure, ChatGPT can help, but to use it reliably, you still need enough medical knowledge to ask good questions and evaluate the answers.

    • redat00 37 minutes ago
      funny enough the guy behind the project also has an app like that https://github.com/zmeyer44/OpenVitals

      (and regarding contributors for all of his projects, it's mostly vibe-coded)

      • Zm44 23 minutes ago
        Think of OpenVitals more as "Don't pay $300/yr for a chatGPT wrapper medical app, just use this with your existing test results for free"
  • jrochkind1 59 minutes ago
    I wonder if it would be possible to do something like this that had transparent end-to-end encryption.
  • noja 1 hour ago
    Why not just use an FTP server?
    • PunchyHamster 38 minutes ago
      coz FTP is garbage protocol that should die 2 decades ago
  • aitchnyu 1 hour ago
    What happens if the server disappears permanently and only the bucket is up?
  • HardwareLust 1 hour ago
    Just don't spin up your machines in Bahrain or the UAE...
  • lain98 18 minutes ago
    I use archive storage class on google cloud, to store old movies and wedding videos, pictures of old vacations.

    For everything else I use paid onedrive subscription. The biggest problem is user interface with s3 like storage and predictable pricing because remember you also pay for data retrieval and other storage apis, with dropbox etc you pay a fixed amount. Every year or so I roll over data into the bucket.

    But for infrequently accessed data its fine.

  • kardianos 52 minutes ago
    Another option is https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo

    This is in Go, exposes both webdav and SFTP servers, with user and admin web interfaces. You can configure remotes, then compose user space from various locations for each user, some could be local, others remote.

  • voidUpdate 44 minutes ago
    "Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, pay for an S3 bucket instead"
  • flanked-evergl 51 minutes ago
    Stop paying for clothes, make your own instead!
  • BordairAPI 20 minutes ago
    this is rlly cool
  • Saphyel 1 hour ago
    S3 is costly and carries significant political baggage.

    For a better alternative, run MinIO on a cloud provider of your choice, or stick with a secure option like Proton Drive.

    • b3lvedere 8 minutes ago
      I use a cheap alternative to the 3-2-1 rule[1].

      I use a mini pc with small smb shares (less than 1 TB). This thing is on 24/7, but runs energy efficient.

      When it's time to move data, i copy it to a Synology NAS that holds lots of TB's. Then it's also time to backup the really important stuff, which goes to a Hetzner Storage Box[2].

      [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup#3-2-1_Backup_Rule [2]: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/

    • wiether 47 minutes ago
      Suggesting MinIO as an alternative to something with "significant political baggage" seems weird given the recent rug pull?
    • ketzu 58 minutes ago
      > S3 is costly

      > run MinIO

      When people say "s3", they mean "any s3 compatible storage" in my experience, not "amazon s3 specifically" or just "s3 as a protocol".

  • Eikon 1 hour ago
    See also: https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS

    Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary. A webui is shipping in the next few days.

    • ledauphin 1 hour ago
      this doesn't seem like it allows multiple writers?
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