[clug] SparkleShare vs. Dropbox

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Bob

----- Original Message -----
> I have been using SparkleShare recently (http://sparkleshare.org),
> which is a "Dropbox replacement" built on all the goodness of git and ssh
> etc. (and you can easily run your own server, so complete control over your
> files etc. - also runs on Macs, 'doze and Linux - but not Android, yet).
> 
> Anyway, being built on top of git, SparkleShare ends up using up to
> twice the disk space on each client as compared to just the files it
> is managing.
> 
> Eg. I have about 1.5GB of PDFs in a shared "folder" on my client and
> git adds another 1.4GB for its compressed, cryptographically hashed
> "repository" of those files. On the server, it only stores the 1.4GB
> of git stuff, but on each other client that is syncing with my share,
> there is the same git "overhead".
> 
> Anyway, I was wondering what disk space overheads Dropbox imposes. As
> I don't use Dropbox, I was wondering if someone on the list who does
> could let me know what extra disk space it might be using.

It doesn't really use extra diskspace, as it works differently, and nothing is encrypted.
With paid accounts you can go back in time on the dropbox.com site (e.g. get an older version of a file back), how that's stored I don't know but in any case it's not on your own machine(s) and it's not encrypted.

SpiderOak is client-side encrypted before anything goes to the server, but I don't think it maintains history/revisions.


If you split these problems into these separate components, they can be resolved differently.
I use
 1a. SpiderOak for sync of some data between my own machines.
 1b. (Dropbox for data shares from some other people.)
 2.  rsnapshot for backups with revisioned history. rsnapshot uses hardlinks for unchanged files so it conserves space.


Cheers,
Arjen.
-- 
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