Best Google Drive Sync alternative?

[Spork829]

I'm sort of in charge of the tech stuff for my school's journalism staffs, and I've been trying to figure out for a while how best to go about live syncing many gigabytes of files between multiple computers in different locations. Google Drive Sync, which we've been using this year, is THEORETICALLY the perfect solution, because we store the files on the cloud and they sync in (mostly) real time to every PC running the application in the background. There are a couple of issues with this: 

 

1. The lack of a backup. Someone could break into our Google account and delete and entire year's worth of work.

 

2. It doesn't really work very well. Files sync correctly probably 90% of the time, which turns into a big issue when we have about 40GB of Adobe project files. Often times the program on one person's computer will simply refuse to sync a certain folder containing stuff they need to work on, and they have to hand it over to me so I can delete everything, reinstall the program and then wait for it to download 40GB of files. 

 

This all isn't even considering the fact that we have 40GB of synced files, but almost 800GB of files on the cloud in total (most of what isn't synced is our enormous photo library and old archives). My adviser pays quite a bit per month for unlimited Google drive storage for this purpose.

 

I haven't found a better solution for this. It's a public school with all sorts of restrictive nonsense in terms of the local network so a physical server is not an option. 

 

Thanks so much to anyone who even reads through this mess let alone has a response  

[desertcomputer]

Im pretty sure google drive keep a copy of your files in recycle bin for 30 days after you deleting it, You could host your own person cloud with NextCloud or Syncthing. 

[m0k]

For me google drive has been working flawlessly for sharing my photography work with clients however my usage in GB is a fraction of yours

 

1. best practice for protecting backups is always to have one off the grid in the form of a NAS 

 

Have you looked into FreeNAS? it might be cheaper in the long run to build a FreeNAS system for yourselves, theres tons of material on the internet for it 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=freenas

 

 

[ArduinoBen]

Are you guys working all over the place with Laptops, or are you guys all on campus?

[Spork829]

21 minutes ago, MrUnknownEMC said:

 

Im pretty sure google drive keep a copy of your files in recycle bin for 30 days after you deleting

 

Well that's good at least.

 

18 minutes ago, mok said:

For me google drive has been working flawlessly for sharing my photography work with clients however my usage in GB is a fraction of yours

 

1. best practice for protecting backups is always to have one off the grid in the form of a NAS 

 

Have you looked into FreeNAS? it might be cheaper in the long run to build a FreeNAS system for yourselves, theres tons of material on the internet for it 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=freenas

 

 

The problem is that I can't really use physical hardware. Like I said the school won't allow me to set up an on-campus server, and I could host it on my home server, but my internet connection won't be able to handle possibly 10+ people accessing the data at once, not to mention drive speed being a bottleneck anyways. And besides that, I'll graduate in 2 years and what then?

So that's why it needs to be cloud based.

4 minutes ago, ArduinoBen said:

Are you guys working all over the place with Laptops, or are you guys all on campus?

All over

[ArduinoBen]

44 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

1. The lack of a backup. Someone could break into our Google account and delete and entire year's worth of work.

Have an automated daily backup that stores it offline.  Have it keep multiple backups so you still have the older data if it gets deleted.

 

45 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

It doesn't really work very well. Files sync correctly probably 90% of the time, which turns into a big issue when we have about 40GB of Adobe project files. Often times the program on one person's computer will simply refuse to sync a certain folder containing stuff they need to work on, and they have to hand it over to me so I can delete everything, reinstall the program and then wait for it to download 40GB of files.

Try a different service such as Amazon cloud or (Microsoft kings) Onedrive.  You'll have your own opinion about which one's best.

[ArduinoBen]

Also, that's a lot of data.  And it's probably quite expensive, you COULD try hosting your own online storage.  But speeds would probably be really crap.....

 

That's a lot of data though, most school newsletters suck.

My school has these people working in PowerPoint finding memes off 9GAG, editing photos in (Apple) Preview and running OS X Mavericks from like 2012.....

[Spork829]

9 hours ago, ArduinoBen said:

Also, that's a lot of data.  And it's probably quite expensive, you COULD try hosting your own online storage.  But speeds would probably be really crap.....

 

That's a lot of data though, most school newsletters suck.

My school has these people working in PowerPoint finding memes off 9GAG, editing photos in (Apple) Preview and running OS X Mavericks from like 2012.....

The yearbook, which is the staff I'm on, and the newspaper are pretty large scale around here.

 

9 hours ago, ArduinoBen said:

Have an automated daily backup that stores it offline.  Have it keep multiple backups so you still have the older data if it gets deleted.

 

Try a different service such as Amazon cloud or (Microsoft kings) Onedrive.  You'll have your own opinion about which one's best.

I'll definitely look into an offline backup, though I'm not sure how I'd set that up. As for other services, do either of those offer real time syncing?

[ChuckMaurice]

10 hours ago, Spork829 said:

1. The lack of a backup. Someone could break into our Google account and delete and entire year's worth of work.

My NAS (some QNAP model) has a feature where it can backup data from main cloud providers (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox...). I guess most of the modern NAS can do it as well.

 

As for account security, be sure to use a good password and two-step authentication on all accounts, even if you'll not be 100% protected.

10 hours ago, Spork829 said:

2. It doesn't really work very well. Files sync correctly probably 90% of the time, which turns into a big issue when we have about 40GB of Adobe project files. Often times the program on one person's computer will simply refuse to sync a certain folder containing stuff they need to work on, and they have to hand it over to me so I can delete everything, reinstall the program and then wait for it to download 40GB of files. 

 

This all isn't even considering the fact that we have 40GB of synced files, but almost 800GB of files on the cloud in total (most of what isn't synced is our enormous photo library and old archives). My adviser pays quite a bit per month for unlimited Google drive storage for this purpose.

I used to work at a school art club (where we did video editing, content creation etc...) where we used Dropbox to sync our data (with a school provided server as a backup). We found that Dropbox was handling big files better than the competition, especially with Adobe files, but the sizes we had were a lot smaller than yours. I didn't worked with them, but the team handling the school "gazette" was using Word, InDesign and the rest of the Adobe suite apparently without issue. 
 

Maybe try out Dropbox, but I'm not sure if the prices are competitive against Google Drive's.

Another solution would be a NAS with either a network-enabled sync protocol (webdav?) or an embedded Nextcloud instance (with associated sync software). It will only cost money upon buy (and power).

 

[Spork829]

9 minutes ago, jldjul said:

My NAS (some QNAP model) has a feature where it can backup data from main cloud providers (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox...). I guess most of the modern NAS can do it as well.

 

As for account security, be sure to use a good password and two-step authentication on all accounts, even if you'll not be 100% protected.

I used to work at a school art club (where we did video editing, content creation etc...) where we used Dropbox to sync our data (with a school provided server as a backup). We found that Dropbox was handling big files better than the competition, especially with Adobe files, but the sizes we had were a lot smaller than yours. I didn't worked with them, but the team handling the school "gazette" was using Word, InDesign and the rest of the Adobe suite apparently without issue. 
 

Maybe try out Dropbox, but I'm not sure if the prices are competitive against Google Drive's.

Another solution would be a NAS with either a network-enabled sync protocol (webdav?) or an embedded Nextcloud instance (with associated sync software). It will only cost money upon buy (and power).

 

Perhaps I'll try out Dropbox, and I'll definitely look into two factor for the account. A physical server isn't an option unfortunately.

[ChuckMaurice]

20 hours ago, Spork829 said:

Perhaps I'll try out Dropbox, and I'll definitely look into two factor for the account.

Maybe the Dropbox Smartsync functionality would be a great answer to your problems. I don't have a Dropbox account anymore so I can't check it.

I forgot to mention it, but paid accounts probably have increased security anyway. Also a Google for Work account (renamed G Suite) could be the solution if you want more security for less money.

Here's a comparison for Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Microsoft. I made this quick list but be sure to check your needs. I myself use Office365 Personnal Plan with 1TB for 69€/year, so I could give you more info on that, but most plans can be tried first.
 

Dropbox Team Standard: $10/user/month for 2TB
Dropbox Team Advanced: $15/user/month for unlimited storage

OneDrive Business: $60/user/year for 1TB per user. Maximum file size: 10GB
OneDrive Business AIO: $15/user/month for 1TB per user + Office suite. Maximum file size: 10GB

Google G-suite: $8/user/month for unlimited storage

Amazon Cloud Drive: $60/year for unlimited storage. Haven't found anything about teams though, seems to mostly be about online backup.
 

Quote

A physical server isn't an option unfortunately.

Because of your school network policy or because other reasons? What if it was a self-hosted cloud server (Nextcloud) as a cheaper alternative from cloud storage providers?

 

 

[Spork829]

2 hours ago, jldjul said:

Because of your school network policy or because other reasons? What if it was a self-hosted cloud server (Nextcloud) as a cheaper alternative from cloud storage providers?

Yeah, the network policy doesn't care if we'd be using the local network or just the internet connection to self-host a cloud, it's all the same to them. I could host it at home, but my internet speed won't be good enough. Plus it's not a long-term solution because I'm graduating in two years.

[Spork829]

2 hours ago, jldjul said:

Maybe the Dropbox Smartsync functionality would be a great answer to your problems. I don't have a Dropbox account anymore so I can't check it.

I forgot to mention it, but paid accounts probably have increased security anyway. Also a Google for Work account (renamed G Suite) could be the solution if you want more security for less money.

Here's a comparison for Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Microsoft. I made this quick list but be sure to check your needs. I myself use Office365 Personnal Plan with 1TB for 69€/year, so I could give you more info on that, but most plans can be tried first.
 

Dropbox Team Standard: $10/user/month for 2TB
Dropbox Team Advanced: $15/user/month for unlimited storage

OneDrive Business: $60/user/year for 1TB per user. Maximum file size: 10GB
OneDrive Business AIO: $15/user/month for 1TB per user + Office suite. Maximum file size: 10GB

Google G-suite: $8/user/month for unlimited storage

Amazon Cloud Drive: $60/year for unlimited storage. Haven't found anything about teams though, seems to mostly be about online backup.

Hmm, Dropbox and OneDrive are both quite expensive, and G-suite doesn't say anything about local file syncing at least on the landing page. I'll look into these more when I get time, thanks so much.

[ChuckMaurice]

34 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

Hmm, Dropbox and OneDrive are both quite expensive, and G-suite doesn't say anything about local file syncing at least on the landing page. I'll look into these more when I get time, thanks so much.

G-suite comes with the standard Google Drive, probably a bit improved, and the info page describes the file syncing as it usually works.

Edit: sorry, it's the FR page, but Google won't let me access the US version as my account is FR.

[Spork829]

1 minute ago, jldjul said:

G-suite comes with the standard Google Drive, probably a bit improved, and the info page describes the file syncing as it usually works.

Edit: sorry, it's the FR page, but Google won't let me access the US version as my account is FR.

Well if it's the same sync application we're using now, which it appears to be, then G-Suite doesn't seem to be much of a benefit, because I think the unlimited drive storage is the same cost either way. 

[Neil_Hines]

While I totally trust Google Drive with all my files and sensitive documents, I prefer Dropbox when it comes to the syncing option. Moreover, you can check out a head-on comparison of Google Drive VS Dropbox to get a more clear idea of what are you dealing with and aspects on which you are missing out. I am a Dropbox user and I have never faced any issues with it. Although where big companies like Apple do have issues with their online cloud storage services, I am really satisfied with what I have. Peace.