I’ve long been using Second Copy to backup my work files, or rather the Subversion repositories in which I store them. It’s worked well enough, but at times I get weird behavior that leaves me manually checking if everything is actually backed up.
I’m considering using Drop Box for this purpose now, which is much more convenient, especially when it comes to working on multiple machines. Basically, I’m planning to store my Subversion repositories on Drop Box, and perhaps leave it turned off except when I backup if it turns out to be slow (which I doubt).
Anyone have much experience with Drop Box here? Is this a crazy idea? Any horror stories about Drop Box losing your data?
I’ve never heard any horror stories although I’m sure they exist.
I use DropBox as a “I want to work on this project on multiple machines” service. I make a folder inside of DropBox my project folder and then I always have up to date files wherever I am.
It’s not really a back up service since it isn’t keeping past versions of files or doing remote storage of any kind. It’s just syncing up machines across the internet (I believe - I could be wrong).
Thoughts: Yes.
It’s great for an online backup. Don’t rely on it as your only backup because:
- It doesn’t protect you against accidentally deleting stuff (well, it does, there’s a 30 day undelete, but it’s not guaranteed, and files I’ve wanted to restore have been missing)
- It’s a free service
Make sure you have offline backup too (ie, hard drive at your parents’).
I used it originally because Stardock asked for Dropbox files to report bugs.
It works fine for that, or transferring small files. I’ve also used it to link larger messages on Twitter.
I wouldn’t use it for large files though. Too slow for that, but for small files it’s awesome.
I believe it does from what I’ve read, although only going back a month or so. Moot from my perspective though, as Subversion covers that.
Accidental deletion is unlikely, as I don’t access the Subversion repository in the Drop Box directly, but yeah, I’m worried about viruses or kids or something.
Thanks for the warning about backup files of older versions not always being restorable.
Seems snappy actually, although that’s likely because of the way Subversion’s db handles changes as individual files encapsulating a diff. I don’t change files of significant size very often, so this isn’t a problem anyway.
Besides, I suspect they’re doing a binary diff so that changes even to large images and so forth should still be fairly snappy, as it’s an easy feature and would save them substantial bandwidth. I haven’t tested this though, so perhaps I’m overly optimistic.
Hrm. Discussion on the Drop Box forums, such as this, is making me leery of combining Subversion and Drop Box…
There have been many reported issues with SVN (and other source control systems as well) within Dropbox, most due to the fact that SVN will write to a file, unlock it, write to another one and then want to write to the first one again - but by that time, Dropbox has seen that there is a change, and grabbed the lock on the file so SVN throws a wobbly (the age old issue of assuming you are the only one ever going to be writing to the fileset).
Jazar
7
Dropbox has been really cool for me. I like being able to share folders with people, and I like that there’s an iPhone app. I can view my word docs, PDFs, it even lets me listen to mp3s I have on my folders. Thanks to referrals and the scavenger hunt they did a while back I have 4.63Gb free.
It does keep files remotely. You can log into dropbox.com from any browser and access your files.
Oh yeah, duh, I guess it must store them remotely.
Kalle
9
I use dropbox as an online image host. Instead of going through a service like imageshack or similar I can just save images to my dropbox public folder.
Yes it stores stuff as well a synching between machines. You get 2 gig free, plus some more for referring friends. In fact, if anyone wants to try it, let me refer you and I get .25 GB more storage space free :)
Oh yes, THIS is a huge part of why I love it as well. Being able to share your work with easy (and persistent) links is very nice.
Yeah, I’ve used Drop Box as an Imageshack replacement for a while now. Much less hassle.
I’ve decided to bite the bullet and use it with Subversion too, with a couple of caveats:
datter
13
I use Dropbox regularly for getting things to/from my iphone and ipad. It works especially nicely for bookmarks as I can export them from Chrome to my Dropbox folder, then import them into iCab Mobile on my iDevices. I also use CameraSync on my phone which automatically uploads any new photos from the phone to dropbox when the app is started. Coupled with a little jailbreak app to fire it up every evening while I sleep, this provides a great automatic photo sync service. Dropbox is great for stuff like that, especially since it’s so well supported in so many third party apps.
For general file back up and storage I use the somewhat less popular SugarSync, though that’s mostly because I sent out a bunch of invites and now have a pretty massive amount of free storage with them (500mbs per successful invite until the end of May). The main benefit of SugarSync over Dropbox is that with SS you can tell it which folders on your system to sync, rather than being forced to use a single dropbox type folder but again, I tend to prefer Dropbox and just stick with SS for the space I have there.
rei
14
Although intensely creepy at times, I love that I can upload/share a file with my friend privately and if the file’s hash exists on the network there is zero upload time and bandwidth expended uploading on my part.
datter
15
Speaking of Dropbox, this might be of interest…
Dropship — successor to torrents?
Alternative for torrents? Millions of users, ready to share with their files? Fast, anonymous, cipher way to download files? Always accessible seed? Everything you need to do that is Dropship — connection of Dropbox and application created by Wladimir van der Laan.
Dropship — is written in Python. It allow us to download to our Dropbox any file, which description we got in JSON format (similar as description propagated in .torrent files).
Also here.
rei
16
Also, if your laptop with Dropbox folder is stolen, the thief still has access to your files.
rei
17
Yeah, sharing just the hash as a means of downloading the file is breaking terms of service. So I hope they nip this in the bud.
It’s not a torrent replacement but more of a Rapidshare thing.
It’s also totally traceable, so you’d have to be pretty stupid to use it for illegal purposes. I expect dropbox will come up with a fairly trivial technical solution for this, probably assigning each user a unique seed or something.
The dropbox content is duplicated locally on your computer and synced to the cloud, it’s not a remote fileshare. Or did you mean a windows password?
