Going back to Dropbox from Google Drive

I've been testing Dropbox, box.net, Google Drive, and AeroFS head to head for the past month or so (I guess I should add SpiderOak, Wuala, Bitcasa, and maybe something else I don't know about)<p>They all do pretty well for small datasets (1-10GB of text files, office documents, mp3s, and sometimes 1-2GB video files and similar files) on OSX and Windows 7. I haven't tried them on Linux or mobile devices much. They all kind of suck with multi-user access (which I simulated by putting clients on all my machines and using them randomly), larger files, etc.<p>None have particularly good performance (fucking Comcast Business; reasonably good on the colo LAN but still not what I'd consider great). Even with the LAN Sync options turned on, adding a new large file with a few client devices on the same LAN causes pain (multiple trips up and down...). A per-client 1/10 of the link size throttle isn't really helpful with 10 clients. AeroFS is different (since it's peer to peer), but is a lot slower than the LAN speed in my experience to sync. Having clients on VPN sometimes makes the whole thing even weirder, since machines on the same LAN aren't on the same network, so syncing traffic goes over a (potentially remote) VPN. And then there's the lulz caused by sync-over-cellular, which admittedly isn't transparent to the client (mifi hotspot sometimes).<p>Looking forward to just getting an 8x4TB Synology or FreeNAS for home, syncing with some combination of physical drives and rsync to/from the colo, and using disk in the colo. iSCSI seems like the best solution.<p>In the long run, I think what's needed is a smarter client -- it should be smart about syncing based on what network I'm on (VPN, LTE, etc.), pre-caching some files and not others (either explicitly or predictively, and maybe different on different devices)<p>There's also the huge mess of security -- both confidentiality and versioning/availability. For multi-user, you can't just layer truecrypt on top. It's depressing that someone yesterday asked "what's the best way to manage corporate documents without putting a copy on every laptop..." (data room style) and the best answer in 2012 seems to be SharePoint :(

I used Google Drive for about 5 minutes then went back to Dropbox and haven't looked back. Firstly, finding where the hell the Google drive folder was located was a pain - then discovering it's odd internal hierarchy and the fact that trying to open files in there launched Google Docs rather than the local application default drove me mad.<p>Dropbox gives me exactly what I want and need: a simple folder that does sync across all my devices and opens files using the local default application.

With all of the hate towards Microsoft here i'm not really surprised of no mention of SkyDrive. It's working quite well for me. I never had any technical issues with Dropbox. I don't like their pricing model. The free account offers less space than my Gmail. The pro account offers way too much space for my use to even consider upgrading.<p>My other concern about Dropbox is that it took them weeks to figure out whether or not their system was compromised not long ago with the help of "outside experts." I don't know what to think of a company which hires others to figure out what's going on with their systems. That worries me a little.

What a scary sight. They are having mechanical turks roam their support forums for support stars giving big-company-esque answers:<p><i>Sorry to hear your experience with Google Drive was troublesome PayamM. Google Drive is constantly improving and thank you for the feedback!</i>

At least uploading into Google Drive did not created hundreds of thousands of duplicates [1] [2] [3]. I still did not get any official answer from Google support.<p>[1] <a href="http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/Yjmkd4nbhw4/C_ns26Fn2gQJ" rel="nofollow">http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/drive/Yjmkd4nbhw...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3910363?start=0&#38;tstart=0" rel="nofollow">https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3910363?start=0&#38;tst...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/drive/d45pvBXNnMM" rel="nofollow">https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/d...</a>

I thought to throw in SugarSnc since it hasn't been mentioned. I also have Dropbox, Drive, Skydrive but Sugar is the one that seems to tick the most boxes for me. It is very easy to choose what folders you sync and to which devices as different devices font need all files. You can add passwords to public folders which is a nice touch. And pricing (at least when I compared 18 months back) was quite competitive.

Google Drive does appear to have performance issues with big data sets. I too have a lot of data (20GB +) in the service and whenever I restart my machine, it does churn the CPU "scanning the web" for changes. Memory usage is also rather high at 600MB.<p>I have never really used dropbox so I don't know if that is really any better from a resource standpoint although from the author of this post indicates like that's the case.<p>I'm still sticking with Google Drive since I only restart my machine about once a month, so this is not too much of a problem for me.<p>In any case, I hope that these issues would get addressed in a future update to the client.

Since Dropbox offered me 50 GB for using a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S3, I've stuck with them. I used Google Drive since I use the spreadsheets, and I absolutely hate it. So I'm sticking with Dropbox for now.

I moved back to Dropbox after a month of use. The only thing that bothered me was google takes a long time to polish its product. Why should I be paying during all this period.

Why does it have to be either/or? I use both Google Drive and Dropbox; the two products have different strengths and weakness, and so I see them as complementary.

Dont know about large file size, but the problem with google drive is it is the most memory eating application. It require around 150 MB RAM when not synching. As compared to dropbox require only 40. Even if it has more space for free users i will not use it. Dropbox primary and SkyDrive a secondary are my choices.

Drive was never an option as a Linux user.

For our company it was the lack of the ability to selectively sync sub-folders. We would have to download 80 GB just to have a few photoshop files for a particular client synced between us while we worked on projects. Completely unusable.

I just moved to AeroFS, no regrets.

I tried using Google Drive for daily database backups (~10 GB * 2 files). - It failed miserably - could backup these files only occasionally. - Quickly filled out my 100GB quota, even when I deleted old version.<p>Dropbox worked like a charm: reliable and much less expensive, considering that size of history files does not count (with special ~$3/month addition).<p>I looks like Google allocated mediocre product managers for creating G-drive.

Very true..same here...Dropbox is just awesome, +1 for it's usability!!<p>I wasted my entire day trying to install 'Google drive' on my Windows 7 machine. It was throwing installation error 1603. What the heck is that!!<p>I tried many solutions searching web (e.g. giving all permissions to %AppData% folder, uninstalling all existing google products etc) but all in vain!! Google...why do you make such creepy s/w?

Dropbox bug which results in data loss has not been resolved yet. So far it appears to have affected both Mac and Linux users.<p><a href="http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can-permanently-lose-your-files" rel="nofollow">http://konklone.com/post/dropbox-bug-can-permanently-lose-yo...</a>

Hmmm you should really try skydrive in that case. Much more reliable and friendly to use.

I'm a bit paranoid with sensitive data, so wuala.com has been great in my case. You just get a client to access the data and when you upload files they all get encrypted before going up there.

I'll only use SpiderOak. I don't want the company I'm uploading personal files to, to be able to view my files.

Losing my files in Google Drive is what made me decide to get a paid Dropbox account.