Is Dropbox still the best for cloud storage?

[octothorpe8]

Would you please share your technique as to how you encrypt a TM-linked directly-attached drive? Assuming your internal HDD isn't encrypted for performance's sake.

You can encrypt a drive using Core Encryption by just right-clicking it on the desktop and choosing "Encrypt...", which will then lead you through the process. It takes a while, but happens in the background. I don't think there's any real performance hit, by the way, in encryping your internal HDD (or SSD), because from what I understand the encryption takes place at a very low level in OS X.

Also, if you did encrypt your boot drive and cloned to an external, that clone would NOT be encrypted — it's just cloning the actual data. You'd want to encrypt that external drive separately as described above. I do this because then I can keep the clone at work or anywhere really and not worry that anyone will be able to open it up and rummage through all my junk.

I would note that I'm not encrypting my Time Machine drive, I'm encrypting the drive I clone to every month (not with Time Machine, but with Carbon Copy Cloner).

 

[Uofmtiger]

I mainly used Dropbox for my Lightroom library so I could access it from my MBP or iMac, but my free account was starting to get full. I ended up moving it to my Synology Cloud (home NAS).

For backups, I use Synology and Crashplan+. I still have Dropbox for the occasional file I want to move, but I mainly just use Synology's cloud for that purpose now.

 

[jdechko]

I would note that I'm not encrypting my Time Machine drive, I'm encrypting the drive I clone to every month (not with Time Machine, but with Carbon Copy Cloner).

A good point. Depending on the nature of your work, it's probably a good idea to keep at least one unencrypted backup of your data on site.

 

[octothorpe8]

A good point. Depending on the nature of your work, it's probably a good idea to keep at least one unencrypted backup of your data on site.

I've heard that before — that encryption is another possible point of failure. Having been burglarized before, having unencrypted data around makes me a little nervous, but whatever.

I also had to unencrypt my Time Machine drive because when I got a new Airport Extreme, I plugged the drive in and am now using it basically as a Time Capsule. Seems to be working pretty well, though the fact that it's backing up to a single disk image file sort of creeps me out. I guess that's where the redundancy of the offsite backup comes in...

 

[Robisan]

Fyi, Google Drive pricing drop announced:

Here's a look at the new model:

$1.99 for 100 gigabytes (previously $4.99)
$9.99 for one terabyte (previously $49.99)
$99.99 for 10 terabytes and higher

Your move Dropbox.

 

[deluxeshredder]

Dropbox just WORKS, unlike iCloud.

 

[Razeus]

Fyi, Google Drive pricing drop announced:



Your move Dropbox.

Nice. Dropbox HAS to drop their prices now. They are getting too pricey.

 

[BadaBing!!]

I'm a Dropbox fan but I agree Google just put a lot of pressure on them by lowering their price that much.

 

[xraydoc]

Nice. Dropbox HAS to drop their prices now. They are getting too pricey.

Agreed. I'll give DB a couple more months to adjust their price after that, I'm moving to Google Drive. It's basically 1/5 the price.

 

[alex.maxham]

I'd say no because of Drive's recent change in pricing. 1TB for $10/month is an awesome price.

 

[Razeus]

Agreed. I'll give DB a couple more months to adjust their price after that, I'm moving to Google Drive. It's basically 1/5 the price.

Yep. I keep reading reports that Amazon keeps cutting their prices, then Microsoft and Google follow suit, several times over the last year. Yet Dropbox (who uses Amazon servers) haven't cut their prices accordingly.

With Copy.com being 2.5x more storage for the same price (250GB for $99), why would I continue to pay for Dropbox?

Now with Google Drive effectively $24 a year for 100GB, again, why would I continue to pay Dropbox? Google Drive is 75% cheaper!

 

[StevenB14]

Google's $1.99 a month for 100GB is a great deal. Seriously tempted.

I have a 50GB Dropbox account at the moment but that will end soon. Are there any down sides of using Google drive instead of Dropbox?

 

[Razeus]

Google's $1.99 a month for 100GB is a great deal. Seriously tempted.

I have a 50GB Dropbox account at the moment but that will end soon. Are there any down sides of using Google drive instead of Dropbox?

Nope.

Well I guess the only thing is that if you use apps that have Dropbox as a storage/backup function.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

I have several cloud storage accounts, and I still prefer Dropbox because it just works.

For example, I often start work on a Word doc on my office iMac that I want to return to in the evening from my MBA on the couch and then back again on my iMac in the morning. If I store it in OneDrive, there's frequently an outdated version when I access it from the other machine hours later. With Dropbox, the latest version is always there right away. Always.

I have no idea why OneDrive takes so long to update sometimes -- but not every time. It's annoying, and I don't have time to waste going to the other machine to pull up the doc and save it to Dropbox.

 

[jdechko]

I've heard that before — that encryption is another possible point of failure. Having been burglarized before, having unencrypted data around makes me a little nervous, but whatever.

You could always create an encrypted sparse bundle for sensitive information like tax returns and account information.

Well I guess the only thing is that if you use apps that have Dropbox as a storage/backup function.

This and shared folders are pretty much why I don't need to switch. That and my data fits comfortably in the free tier. I'm literally using 1/10th of my total capacity. It works for me and I'm happy enough.

 

[AndyK]

Does Google sync as well and seamlessly as Dropbox does?

 

[Cubytus]

You can encrypt a drive using Core Encryption by just right-clicking it on the desktop and choosing "Encrypt...", which will then lead you through the process. It takes a while, but happens in the background. I don't think there's any real performance hit, by the way, in encryping your internal HDD (or SSD), because from what I understand the encryption takes place at a very low level in OS X.

I've read otherwise. Because the CPU still needs to perform the actual mathematics behind encryption, it gets used more, and that kills battery life.

On the other hand I have no such item in the contextual menu.

I'm a Dropbox fan but I agree Google just put a lot of pressure on them by lowering their price that much.

They are only lowering it so much simply because they expect to snoop on whatever document you'll put inside to draw an even more precise profile of you. There's no point falling in awe for what is a honeypot.

 

[Weaselboy]

I've read otherwise. Because the CPU still needs to perform the actual mathematics behind encryption, it gets used more, and that kills battery life.

I have run FV2 encryption on my internal drives ever since it came out in Lion and there is a very slight drive performance hit (test here), but I don't notice it at all. Having used FV2 on three different Macbook and Macbook Air models now I can tell you I see zero battery life difference.

On the other hand I have no such item in the contextual menu.

If you are on Mountain Lion or newer and you right click on an external drive you will see the menu below. I just took this screen cap on 10.9.2 with a USB external.

 

[GanChan]

I'm new to cloud backup/storage, and I'm really torn about whether to put all my eggs in one basket for a marginal fee (I only need about 50-60G of storage space total), or take advantage of multiple free accounts.

I was just going to archive/backup everything via Crashplan. But I wonder if hubiC, which runs French servers and is therefore not subject to the Patriot Act, might provide that much more privacy for sensitive documents (non-disclosure agreements with business clients who have not yet released certain products being discussed, etc). HubiC, Copy and others each offer a decent chunk of free space. I also have 100G of free Google drive space that could be used for non-sensitive data such as music files; I don't care if Google snoops into my tastes in music. But before I know it, I'd be trying to remember a half-dozen passwords for a haf-dozen services. Maybe I should just pony up for Crashplan, download a client-side encryption program for use as needed, and call it a day?

 

[EricMR]

Google Drive and Mac metadata

Does Google Drive now handle Mac metadata correctly? An early report said it "did not transfer the following metadata: label, creation date, extended attributes, locked flag, invisible flag." I understand that some other sync services also have problems with these items and with Mac resource forks. The report is from a while back, but I haven't been able to find more recent information to see if the problems have been fixed.

 

[Cubytus]

I have run FV2 encryption on my internal drives ever since it came out in Lion and there is a very slight drive performance hit (test here), but I don't notice it at all. Having used FV2 on three different Macbook and Macbook Air models now I can tell you I see zero battery life difference.


If you are on Mountain Lion or newer and you right click on an external drive you will see the menu below. I just took this screen cap on 10.9.2 with a USB external.

Image

That would be interesting to test out, however I don't use ML. Latest here is Lion, and likely to remain so since a 2009 MacBook at 4GB RAM probably can't do much more. For usability purpose I am still not ready to move from SL on my main MBP.

What CPU is inside the machine you're running encryption onto?

I'm new to cloud backup/storage, and I'm really torn about whether to put all my eggs in one basket for a marginal fee (I only need about 50-60G of storage space total), or take advantage of multiple free accounts.

I was just going to archive/backup everything via Crashplan. But I wonder if hubiC, which runs French servers and is therefore not subject to the Patriot Act, might provide that much more privacy for sensitive documents (non-disclosure agreements with business clients who have not yet released certain products being discussed, etc). HubiC, Copy and others each offer a decent chunk of free space. I also have 100G of free Google drive space that could be used for non-sensitive data such as music files; I don't care if Google snoops into my tastes in music. But before I know it, I'd be trying to remember a half-dozen passwords for a haf-dozen services. Maybe I should just pony up for Crashplan, download a client-side encryption program for use as needed, and call it a day?

Multiple free accounts are workable in theory, but a great pain when it comes to keep all assistants running on your machine as it draws battery and CPU power.

I am not aware of hubiC encryption of customers' data, but we know the French State still occasionally spies on private data (though nowhere near the full-on scale of the NSA). I'd suggest you ask them if data-at-rest is encrypted, as well as data-in-transit. Coming from what may be the largest private hosting company that makes its money from selling actual service, I tend to consider them more trustworthy than Google.

 

[Weaselboy]

What CPU is inside the machine you're running encryption onto?

I am currently running FV2 on a 2013 MBA with the 1.3 i5. I have run it as far back as a 2010 i3 iMac I had and really could not detect any slowdown at all.

 

[Razeus]

It seems like Google is going for the jugular. This pricing undercuts even the wholesale prices developers get.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/13/google_cloud_price_cuts/

Amazon Web Services's S3 service costs $8.50 per 100GB per month, and Microsoft's Windows Azure charges $6.80 for 100GB of locally redundant stored data a month.

More intriguingly, the Drive price cut undercuts the $6.30 Google charges for storing 100GB in its mainstream infrastructure-as-a-service Google Cloud Storage.

So, since Dropbox is completely reliant on Amazon, I don't even think Dropbox could cut their prices even if they wanted to.

Something is coming on the 25th: https://cloud.google.com/events/google-cloud-platform-live/

 

[octothorpe8]

I've read otherwise. Because the CPU still needs to perform the actual mathematics behind encryption, it gets used more, and that kills battery life.

You might be thinking of previous generations of FileVault (which were very different and worse). Apparently the encryption is now leveraging built-in features of the processor.

Here's what I'm reading:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/10/filevault-2-benchmarks-disk-encryption-faster-mac-os-x-lion/

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/105320/answer/submit

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You could always create an encrypted sparse bundle for sensitive information like tax returns and account information.

Definitely. I do this actually, for certain key things. I even back those disk images up onto Dropbox and sync them between Macs. Just have to be careful not to mount then on multiple machines simultaneously or you get the dreaded "conflicted file"...

 

[Cubytus]

You might be thinking of previous generations of FileVault (which were very different and worse). Apparently the encryption is now leveraging built-in features of the processor.

Here's what I'm reading:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/10/filevault-2-benchmarks-disk-encryption-faster-mac-os-x-lion/

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/105320/answer/submit

Indeed I was. The only Lion machine at home is a Core 2 Duo, which, according to these articles, isn't used for cryptography operations. I bet it's moot as I'm running SL.