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Dropbox replacement?

5 points by phishphood ↗ HN
I ran out of 50Gb limit on dropbox and am not sure I want to go to the next level (100Gb), it is a) too expensive and b) I will overgrow it in 6 month or so c) data doesn't really need to be in the cloud but it needs to be synced up between few computers.

Is there an alternative to dropbox? I don't mind paying but something more reasonable than dropbox rates

19 comments

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dmnd
You could try AeroFS (http://www.aerofs.com) which was discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731
Terretta
You could, and then you could wait. The "download" button is actually a "request invite" button:

Sign Up for an AeroFS Invite

AeroFS is still in early alpha/beta. Please enter your email address below and we'll invite you as soon as we can :-)

yurisagalov
This is mostly out of necessity, we're still squashing bugs daily and aren't really ready to accept mass user sign ups yet :)

That being said, we _are_ releasing invites on a fairly regular basis (usually coinciding with new bug fixed versions, in an effort to improve the overall user experience)

phishphood
Hi Yuri, I did sign up for an invite. Can you please tell me whats the major reason(s) I would want to go with you not with JungleDisk which seems to be doing similar things. Is it price/value differentiation only or there is more to the story?
yurisagalov
We're fundamentally very different from JungleDisk (unless they've been doing something we're not aware of)...

JungleDisk (like most other players in this space) requires you to upload your data to their server first, before you're able to sync it to other devices, where as using AeroFS, you're actually syncing data completely peer-to-peer (e.g. even on an isolated LAN), without a third party server, unless you want one

Terretta
I myself, and some of my colleagues, have signed up from time to time since the thread 144 days ago, and we have yet to receive a single invite among us.
yurisagalov
Unfortunately we hear this complaint from time to time.

We didn't really expect the level of demand that we've had at our initial announcement ~144 days ago. Nevertheless, we've been pretty hard at work, and we are looking to ramp up invitations in the near future, but for now I can only implore you to bear with us :-)

__Rahul
You have not detailed your usecase/OS, but do consider Amazon S3 http://bit.ly/fM7pm5.

Dropbox storage itself is hosted on S3.

epynonymous
good point, need requirements.

i think bang for buck would be something akin to usb disk, it's arguably offsite. there are lots of software applications that can provide automation of file backup.

if you want sync, there's sugarsync and box.net, haven't used those so no feedback.

if you want online backup there's carbonite and mozy that offer unlimited accounts.

phishphood
Requirements are quite simple: sync up a shared folder between 3 macs, 1 pc and 2 laptops. OS are: Windows XP, Vista and MacOS. Data doesn't need to be on the cloud, but the sync needs to work reliably (dropbox messed up few of the syncs in a bad way and I had to get the backups out)

Data growth is quite slow, may be ~2 Gb/week

I don't have a full time IT person, so I should be able to manage things without going into system administration, rsync scares me

I want to pay may be < $.20/Gb, dropbox is expensive at $.50/gig on their highest capacity plan.

From what I can see AeroFS would fit the bill very nicely, but they seem to be not really available at this point

Another option I am looking at right now is Microsoft Live Mesh, which has an app for a Mac. I don't have ideological reasons not to try them, so I am installing it on one of the macs to see if it works or no

inthewoods
www.libox.com - works great, no limit.
hasenj
Interesting. How does it work? How can it be free?

I would love to try it, but there's no Linux version.

ksfq
I use SugarSync and it is quite good. They were a little flaky on the beginning but now they are quite fast and reliable.
kumark23
You might want to look at Vembu Home. It has cloud storage + external USB storage + syncing + file sharing. You pay only for cloud storage. http://home.vembu.com