Storage device for my dad's business files

izz · March 10

Hi all,

My dad has been backing up his business files (a few terabytes) to Dropbox for years now. He's using Carbonite to back up his files from his computer, but those files are just "shell" files that link to the Dropbox file. He initially wanted to get a laptop with enough storage to back up the real files to Carbonite and have them on Dropbox (to eliminate the "shell" files) but the only laptops we could find with 2TB of storage were beefy gaming monsters. My dad doesn't really want to get an external drive because then he has to plug it in constantly to sync with Dropbox and Carbonite. We were also thinking of getting a PC just to store these files, almost to act as like a personal server, do you guys have any ideas for a way to store these files so they can be synced to Dropbox and backed up to Carbonite but my dad physically has them if anything goes wrong with Dropbox/the real files are getting backed up to Carbonite? Thanks.

Electronics Wizardy · March 10

If he is happy with the sync setups he already has, I'd be tempted to not touch it, and just put a big SSD in a laptop to store all the files. Then you don't have to maintain

Do other people work with these files?

I'd be tempted to have the Dropbox/other solution backed up directionly, so then there isn't a need to store all the files on the laptop and back them all up.

izz · March 15

On 3/10/2024 at 1:16 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

If he is happy with the sync setups he already has, I'd be tempted to not touch it, and just put a big SSD in a laptop to store all the files. Then you don't have to maintain

Do other people work with these files?

I'd be tempted to have the Dropbox/other solution backed up directionly, so then there isn't a need to store all the files on the laptop and back them all up.

He just ordered an XPS with 4TB so that should take care of it. Will Dropbox let other services back it up? I assume not.