Raspberry Pi for dropbox

[Walt]

Hi everyone,

I'm helping a friend who has problem with his laptop and dropbox. The company where he works are using dropbox for everything. Every document/photo/video they use is uploaded to dropbox and his laptop just can't handle it. Because the original dropbox folder where everything is shared from is on his laptop he has problems that his laptop freezes and gets slow. Because it's synchronising the whole time.

I told him he should buy a raspberry pi and let it share the files from there. Is this a good idea? and will it work?

Thanks!

[Aelita Sophie]

9 hours ago, Walt said:

Hi everyone,

I'm helping a friend who has problem with his laptop and dropbox. The company where he works are using dropbox for everything. Every document/photo/video they use is uploaded to dropbox and his laptop just can't handle it. Because the original dropbox folder where everything is shared from is on his laptop he has problems that his laptop freezes and gets slow. Because it's synchronising the whole time.

I told him he should buy a raspberry pi and let it share the files from there. Is this a good idea? and will it work?

Thanks!

It could definitely work, though do mind, to be able to access the data on the raspberry pi, you need to set up a network share. And if the files are a bit big... (like few hundred megs or even bigger) then a raspberry pi would be considered to slow, as it only has a 100mbit network port.

Also ofcourse, it will only access able when the laptop is in the same network as the raspberry pi, unless you do some port forwarding, which I highly do NOT recommend. (SMB/Samba is NOT a safe protocol)

 

But simply put. Buy a raspberry pi for around $40. Buy an SD card of 8GB or bigger for about $15 (Class 10 or better). Buy an external harddisk that is either a 2.5" usb2.0/3.0 or a selfpowered 3.5"

Ofcourse you need a decent power supply for the pi. 2.5 Amps recommended on 5v, especially with an external harddrive.

 

Then install Debian or Ubuntu based linux. Install dropbox and let it sync with a folder on the exteral drive. Install NFS-tools/SAMBA/SMB and make a share of that folder on your external drive. Then mount it in windows as a network drive and you are done.

[Walt]

7 hours ago, Aelita Sophie said:

It could definitely work, though do mind, to be able to access the data on the raspberry pi, you need to set up a network share. And if the files are a bit big... (like few hundred megs or even bigger) then a raspberry pi would be considered to slow, as it only has a 100mbit network port.

Also ofcourse, it will only access able when the laptop is in the same network as the raspberry pi, unless you do some port forwarding, which I highly do NOT recommend. (SMB/Samba is NOT a safe protocol)

 

But simply put. Buy a raspberry pi for around $40. Buy an SD card of 8GB or bigger for about $15 (Class 10 or better). Buy an external harddisk that is either a 2.5" usb2.0/3.0 or a selfpowered 3.5"

Ofcourse you need a decent power supply for the pi. 2.5 Amps recommended on 5v, especially with an external harddrive.

 

Then install Debian or Ubuntu based linux. Install dropbox and let it sync with a folder on the exteral drive. Install NFS-tools/SAMBA/SMB and make a share of that folder on your external drive. Then mount it in windows as a network drive and you are done.

Thanks for your help!

Good to know the max data speed of the pi is 100mbit. Is this upgradeable?

Another question: is it possible to put Dropbox on it and share that way. Because people doesn’t need to be on the same network then.

Thanks!

[Daysy]

Having tried to do kind of what you are saying but in reverse, I run a network share on a raspberry pi and wanted to have a folder on that share sink out to Dropbox for backup, I can tell you that Dropbox does not play nicely with raspberry pi, I had an absolute nightmare trying to get it all set up and it only worked for a short time before throwing an absolute loon and makeing a total mess of both the Dropbox account and my network share.

I'm not saying it's impossible and actually I'm sure that with some research and a bit of effort you could find a way to make it work better than I did.

However if your friend is not technically minded and bearing in mind it's work material he is dealing with you might be best to find another solution.

[Walt]

44 minutes ago, Daysy said:

Having tried to do kind of what you are saying but in reverse, I run a network share on a raspberry pi and wanted to have a folder on that share sink out to Dropbox for backup, I can tell you that Dropbox does not play nicely with raspberry pi, I had an absolute nightmare trying to get it all set up and it only worked for a short time before throwing an absolute loon and makeing a total mess of both the Dropbox account and my network share.

I'm not saying it's impossible and actually I'm sure that with some research and a bit of effort you could find a way to make it work better than I did.

However if your friend is not technically minded and bearing in mind it's work material he is dealing with you might be best to find another solution.

Okay that’s good to know. Thanks!

What do you advise me to do instead? (It can be technically difficult because I can help him ) 

 

[Aelita Sophie]

12 hours ago, Walt said:

Thanks for your help!

Good to know the max data speed of the pi is 100mbit. Is this upgradeable?

Another question: is it possible to put Dropbox on it and share that way. Because people doesn’t need to be on the same network then.

Thanks!

Well you could buy a USB3.0 1Gbit stick. But that would be capped at 450~mbit. Due the chip limitations of Raspberry Pi only having the 2.0 spec. Its still a good improvement, but still for most people to slow. (Heck, if you've got a NAS with a few terabytes, even 1gbit will seem slow when u need to copy over 1TB of data)

 

In terms of actually upgrading the raspberry pi, there is no real way. And for that money, you are better off buying a CPU-onboard motherboard like a Q1900ITX from Asrock for about $80. It has a 1Gbit port, has 4 SATA ports and a Quad core. Also the dropbox support as mentioned by @Walt is a lot better that way. Since ARM architectures are still a bitch to work with in terms of software support.

 

Raspberry Pi is cheap and fun, but gives little to no upgrade path. The Q1900ITX is like $80 + 4GB ram, PSU $30 and case $10-20 is a better option, but a little more pricier. But has a LOT more power.

[Daysy]

15 hours ago, Aelita Sophie said:

Well you could buy a USB3.0 1Gbit stick. But that would be capped at 450~mbit. Due the chip limitations of Raspberry Pi only having the 2.0 spec. Its still a good improvement, but still for most people to slow. (Heck, if you've got a NAS with a few terabytes, even 1gbit will seem slow when u need to copy over 1TB of data)

 

In terms of actually upgrading the raspberry pi, there is no real way. And for that money, you are better off buying a CPU-onboard motherboard like a Q1900ITX from Asrock for about $80. It has a 1Gbit port, has 4 SATA ports and a Quad core. Also the dropbox support as mentioned by @Walt is a lot better that way. Since ARM architectures are still a bitch to work with in terms of software support.

 

Raspberry Pi is cheap and fun, but gives little to no upgrade path. The Q1900ITX is like $80 + 4GB ram, PSU $30 and case $10-20 is a better option, but a little more pricier. But has a LOT more power.

This is essentially what I would recommend. I picked up a dirt cheap tower second had from a company that deals with "end of lease" office equipment and with a few mods to it have a home server. Another option could be a Windows based single board like the latte panda, you would have some of the same issues as a pi (e.g. slow network speeds) but if you are syncing Dropbox and using usb storage you would largely be bottlenecked by you internet speed or the read/write to the drive anyway

[Aelita Sophie]

6 hours ago, Daysy said:

This is essentially what I would recommend. I picked up a dirt cheap tower second had from a company that deals with "end of lease" office equipment and with a few mods to it have a home server. Another option could be a Windows based single board like the latte panda, you would have some of the same issues as a pi (e.g. slow network speeds) but if you are syncing Dropbox and using usb storage you would largely be bottlenecked by you internet speed or the read/write to the drive anyway

Generally I would look towards something that would work for the next 5 years. Latte Panda is great due the X86 platform it serves, but that is about it. For the money you could just as well spend a little bit more to have a longer lasting solution. A second hand PC like you said is a great option. If warranty is important then go with a cheap new build like I mentioned before. It can handle expansion cards in the future and can handle more drives then i.e. a raspberry or a latte panda in general without real limitations.

With such system you could even run Plex or something to serve video streaming (such as movies) to for example your smart tv.