
Ask HN: Is there a home Dropbox-style solution?  (better explanation inside) - coreyp_1
Context: My home was broken into while I was out of the country.  Thankfully, they did not find my backup hard drive with irreplaceable files on it.  I began thinking of my family members (less technologically inclined), and realized that they would never pay for a backup service (because they don&#x27;t see the need for it yet), but I know that they need it.  I also know the amount of info that they have in multimedia (pics and home video) alone is huge, which would make it prohibitively expensive to use most commercial solutions.<p>It would be interesting to have a home-based backup with RAID-like capability (specifically, parity checks), that could be shared between home (commodity) computers in different locations over the Internet.  For example, 3 family members could serve as backup locations for one another and, potentially, cloud access for personal files.  Encryption could be included so as to protect private contents.  Alternatively, files could be openly shared (family pictures and music!).  Parity could ensure redundancy in the event of loss of one of the computers, and the backup could be reconstituted from the remaining nodes.<p>Does anyone have any further insight on this?<p>If there&#x27;s not an existing solution, does anybody want to work on one?  There&#x27;s business possibilities in it, for sure!
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BACnetEd
Also, "unRAID" from LimeTech allows you to build a parity protected server
from left-over disks. I have built two, now multi-Terabyte servers, for
throwing all sorts of material onto, and been through two disk burnouts where
the parity did in fact fully protect the data. I used 256MB and 1TB drives
initially, but slowly cycle up as I need more space (you can add up to 20
disks on the "Pro" version (something like $59), but due to space in my
enclosure I have stuck to 4 + 1 for parity). Currently I have a mix of 8, 4,
2, 1TB. Disks don't spin if not used... _very_ nice.

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BACnetEd
Crashplan (free version allows you to cross-backup with a friend at another
location)

