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digitalderbs writes:
"A perennial problem facing computer users is how to keep documents, pictures, music and other personal files synchronized between computers. Robust uni-directional solutions, like rsync, and bi-directional solutions, like unison, have existed for a long time. However, these tools require some degree of manual intervention on a periodic basis. Simplified tools like Dropbox and bittorrent sync have emerged as popular, useful and automated alternatives, but these rely on closed-source software, which could be subject to backdooring. Open source solutions, like OwnCloud, are gaining traction, but are these open source platform robust and easy enough to maintain for routine and daily use? Moreover, distributed and encrypted file systems, like Ceph, are increasingly easy to use, but many of these do not work between Linux and OS X or Windows operating systems. What are your experiences and thoughts?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Monday March 24 2014, @09:27PM
Count me in as a DropBox user. To be honest the whole "but it's backdoored!" argument isn't all that compelling to me. I've been wandering around the internet since the mid-nineties and one of the earliest things I discovered is that keeping information on a net-connected computer always means there's a risk of that information getting out. Heck, one time I went to a computer store with a floppy and copied a game off one of the demo machines. If I can do that, why couldn't a friend visiting my house do the same thing? I don't have anything particularly sensitive on my computer to begin with, let alone on my DropBox account.
With that said, I actually do encrypt my drives. That may seem contradictory but, really, just because I'm not worried about it getting out doesn't mean I want the world to have it, either. So you'd think SpiderOak would be more up my alley, right? Well, no. At least not when I used it. It's cheaper and the encryption is done on my end, as opposed to at the server end, meaning there's no practical way anybody over at SpiderOak HQ is going to get at my files like they can at DropBox. But in the process of doing all that, they over designed it. With DropBox, if I install it on one machine, it syncs them all at the same time. With SpiderOak I actually had to set up a bunch of rules about who syncs with who about what. It didn't take long before my interest in SpiderOak died. DropBox made it dirt simple: Put files in this folder, they'll automagically get replicated on every other machine on this account.
So, is it the most secure? No. But I am doing something that is very smart: I'm doing off-site backups. When I write a script, for example, every time I hit save it's also copied to DropBox's server. My hard drive could suddenly die and I'd still have my file! DB most certainly got that right. In addition to that, the smartphone app for it works pretty well. When I take photos they automatically appear on the desktops I have using that account. The opposite of that is true, too, stuff I put on my desktop is now available on my smartphone. On a couple of occasions I've left an experiment running where the information was being written to DropBox and I was able to monitor it from my phone.
I am easily a satisfied customer. But boy do I wish they would set up client-side encryption. Just because I'm okay with my own stuff on DB doesn't mean any employer of mine would like it.
Slashdolt logic: 1600 x 1200 > 1920 x 1200
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bartman12345 on Tuesday March 25 2014, @04:52AM
I am a long-time Spideroak user, and I know what you mean about the intimidating level of complexity. However, this problem has been addressed with the introduction of the "Hive" functionality (works just like your Dropbox folder). This has made Spideroak "Dropbox Simple" to use, while still retaining the old sync methods for those who want or need them.