

Ask HN: Dropbox? - jason_slack

Hi All,<p>I would live thoughts on the Dropbox service. Reliable? Good Customer Service? Horror stories?<p>My goal here is just what they advertise for functionality. Unified across my devices, sharing, etc. I currently backup to a number of devices, etc.<p>Could I make my home directory for My mac my DropBox drive? Smart idea?<p>What do you all think would happen if DropBox went out of business. Would they make sure we all had copies of our data?<p>I have MobileMe now. It is decent for sure. I can buy 60gb more space for $99 for the year (or $49 for 40gb) It seems to have similar functionality. I doubt Apple would give us our data if they decided to discontinue MobileMe. It seems unlikely they would though.
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bherms
Dropbox is great all around for a number of reasons. The pricing is pretty
good too, but for most uses, the free account is sufficient. There are tons of
useful features too. If the service goes down, you have the stuff available on
every PC that has synced. Check out
[http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/15_hacks_every_dro...](http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/15_hacks_every_dropbox_user_should_know)
and
[http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_hack_your_dropbo...](http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_hack_your_dropbox_five_amazing_mashups)
too.

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jason_slack
Useful, thanks.

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michael_dorfman
As far as I am concerned, Dropbox "just works".

Why not try it out with the free, 2GB version, and see how it works for you?

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jason_slack
How do you feel their security is? I get nervous about services like these
because of info I would keep out there. Source code, personal documents, etc,
etc

~~~
michael_dorfman
I've got no complaints, and I've never heard of any security problems. But if
the security of the materials is really important to you, you can always
encrypt before copying to your Dropbox folder.

~~~
amock
That makes Dropbox a lot harder to use because you now have to be able to
decrypt your files on every device you want to use Dropbox on. I use Dropbox
to have access to my files from anywhere with an internet connection if even
I'm not on my computer and unless there's encryption built in that isn't going
to work.

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projectileboy
I can't say enough good things about Dropbox. Cross-platform, fast, easy...
the little guy just works.

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Andrenid
Dropbox is one of my favourite and first-recommended products lately. I use it
for lots of things.

I use it as a general dump-folder that I sync across my Macbook Pro, my work
PC (Win XP), and my Android phone. This cross-platform ability so share files
is priceless to me.

I also keep my KeePass file on it, then have copies of KeePass on my phone,
work PC, and laptop all pointed to that devices Dropbox folder, giving me
shared access to my encrypted passwords anywhere, anytime. Again, priceless.

I use a shared Dropbox folder with some friends, and we sync files to each
other when we want to share them. No more email attachments, image uploaders,
or IM file transfers.

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bendmorris
I absolutely love DropBox and use it to sync my laptops, home and work
computers. One great use for it, I think, is Tomboy Notes, which I use to take
notes in meetings on my netbook, track progress on projects at work, keep a
list of stuff I need to do, etc. I don't really use it for source code, which
is usually version controlled anyway.

> What do you all think would happen if DropBox went out of business. Would
> they make sure we all had copies of our data?

That's the beauty of DropBox; you already have copies of your data, on all
computers that you sync to. It's really convenient, especially on laptops that
aren't always connected to the internet, etc.

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tomschmnidt
Dropbox is a great service… first heard about it half a year ago. Use it
almost daily to move files to and from my Moto Milestone.

Totally self serving link: If you want to try Dropbox, but don’t already have
an account try signing up using my referal link. You’ll get an additional 250
MB (in addition to the 2 GB standard amount)

<http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTkzNTAwMDk5>

Full disclosure: I’ll get 250 MB too. So everyone wins :-)

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CoachRufus87
I essentially use my dropbox folder as my "everything" folder for my mac. it's
obviously mirrored across my iphone and pc as well. theres nothing like
committing code, pushing it to git, and seeing the little dropbox icon
updating at the same time. i rarely use time machine any more. start with 2
gigs, refer lots of friends (i think up to 5 gigs?). that's plenty of space to
back up the essentials (school stuff, code, misc important docs)

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carlrice
Hands down the best file syncing and backup experience. I use it on my Ubuntu
netbook and laptop, iMac, Macbook Pro, a Windows 7 VM on occasion and my
Android. Sometimes there are weird conflicts between all these different
devices (maybe client software/OS bugs?) but I trust it with my life.

99% of all my files are in Dropbox (minus large archived projects and videos
for space/bandwidths sake) and I do a monthly dump to an external.

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skittles
I believe they reserve the right to delete your content (on their side) for
their free service level. Another current problem is the lack of group drop-
boxes. A dropbox can be shared, but each consumer's dropbox limit is affected
by the shared-data size. So a group that wanted to share a dropbox would need
one dropbox master account and a same-sized account for each user.

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smoody
My one issue with Dropbox is that they own the encryption key and, to the best
of my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong), they do not provide a feature to
let me define my own locally stored key. If someone gets hold of their
encryption keys (or worse yet, if there's a single encryption key), then,
potentially, my data can be compromised.

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scharan
It is absolutely fabulous. I keep my Linux box, Mac and Win PC in sync. I also
use it to keep a single copy of my dot files and share them between my mac and
linux box (I use symlinks in home dir to point to Dropbox files). So far,
pretty reliable.

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jnorion
Check this out for other ideas on what can be done with it:
[http://lifehacker.com/5527055/the-cleverest-ways-to-use-
drop...](http://lifehacker.com/5527055/the-cleverest-ways-to-use-dropbox-that-
youre-not-using)

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blender
Have you looked at Wuala?

[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-do-you-get-if-you-
combine-...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-do-you-get-if-you-combine-
dropbox-and-mozy-wuala/)

Cheers

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bunchesofdonald
I've used it ever since it was in beta, (for around 2 years), and I've never
had a problem with it, as michael_dorfman said, "it just works."

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Ixiaus
TarSnap if you like security, are comfortable with the commandline, and want
to write your own automation scripts...

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davidedicillo
It changed completely the way I manage files in my business. In positive of
course.

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bmelton
As for your data (with Dropbox), it's all on your system at the same time it
is on the Cloud. I have the 50Gb plan, and one of my slight complaints is that
on the same disk, I have the dropbox contents twice (one for my Windows
partition, one for Linux) -- so I have to keep 100Gb free total to support
them. This is a stupid complaint really (and it MIGHT work if I moved the
dropbox to a shared drive, but frankly, I don't want to test out what would
happen if two operating systems were using the same dropbox space), so I
wouldn't worry about that, but the point is that your files are always your
files. If, on the odd chance they do go out of business, all of your files
still exist across all of your computers (though they may not be synced
anymore), and wouldn't be lost to you.

As for the other aspects of their service, I have to agree that it 'just
works'. I don't have to worry about it, ever. I haven't dealt with customer
service, so I have no idea how they are, but I've never had to either, and
I've been using them since their inception. No lost files, no corrupt files,
no strange files, and no problems with version conflicts. It's just... solid.

~~~
jnorion
As long as the two operating systems aren't accessing the folder AT THE SAME
TIME (which they won't be -- either you boot into Windows or into Linux), you
shouldn't have any issues. Really, it would probably make life a lot easier to
set up a third "data" partition that both access, and put all your stuff on
that.

But anyway, back on topic: I'm using the free version (2GB) of Dropbox and, as
others have said, it "just works." It's fast and easy and has been incredibly
helpful for moving things between work and home, and for viewing files on my
phone.

