Personal 'cloud' backup alternatives

SirConfused · 25 Apr 2022 at 09:49

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice on software to use as an alternative to google drive that can be self-hosted. My searching has been reasonably successful but I want to do a sanity check to make sure I haven't missed anything obvious before I start trying to deploy something.

At the simplest level, I want to replace the google drive backup for my android phone pictures, but extra functionality like backup of phone settings etc would be a nice to have. Ideally it would be automated and not require manual intervention (I'll just forget) and could be set up to only go ahead over wifi etc.

So far I've found NextCloud which seems to be linux only on the backend so that's out, and Syncthing, which does have a windows backend and therefore the only option that fits that I've found.

Does anyone have any alternatives or is Syncthing the best/only option available?

Thanks

thenewoc · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:06

Might be worth looking into OneDrive. The reason I mention this is because yesterday I noticed the Windows baked in backup feature includes OneDrive as a destination. They have a mobile app but I've not looked into whether that can do the same.

Vampyre · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:36

You could always run Nextcloud in a Linux VM

Deleted member 77746 · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:41

The problem with running your own cloud solution is - you are the one responsible for that backup completely. It takes 1 tiny thing to loose the lot.

Does the backup get backed up or you just going to rely on 1x or 2x copies of the data somewhere?

SirConfused · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:43

thenewoc said:
Might be worth looking into OneDrive. The reason I mention this is because yesterday I noticed the Windows baked in backup feature includes OneDrive as a destination. They have a mobile app but I've not looked into whether that can do the same.

Can you self-host OneDrive then? I can't say I was aware of that as an option but I'll have a look.

Vampyre said:
You could always run Nextcloud in a Linux VM

That's a fair point. I haven't ever had the need to play with vm's before, but I assume it's not going to be too happy with 8gb of system memory shared across 2 OS instances running at once?

SirConfused · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:46

Bouton Aide said:
The problem with running your own cloud solution is - you are the one responsible for that backup completely. It takes 1 tiny thing to loose the lot.

Does the backup get backed up or you just going to rely on 1x or 2x copies of the data somewhere?

It's a raid setup on my server to give me some redundancy there and I have an external drive for off site backup that gets brought in every month or 2. I'm happy to accept the risk of doing it myself if it means I don't constantly have to clear out stuff from my Google drive to make space, or pay another damn subscription for something.

Deleted member 77746 · 25 Apr 2022 at 10:50

SirConfused said:
It's a raid setup on my server to give me some redundancy there and I have an external drive for off site backup that gets brought in every month or 2. I'm happy to accept the risk of doing it myself if it means I don't constantly have to clear out stuff from my Google drive to make space, or pay another damn subscription for something.

If you already run that as a server then that's alright.

Which raid are you running? There are many many open source platforms for backup solutions.

There's also one called OwnCloud but it does the same job as NextCloud.

SirConfused · 25 Apr 2022 at 20:22

It's just raid 1, nothing fancy.

I know there are plenty of backup solutions, but I was looking for something specifically that syncs android data automatically which seems to be a lot harder to find. I saw owncloud but the reviews I read suggested that most of the dev team have moved over to nextcloud which was originally just a fork of it.

I'm just going to give nextcloud a try to start.

TangoEchoAlpha · 26 Apr 2022 at 08:32

@SirConfused SyncThing does have an Android client. I have it installed on my Pixel2, downloaded via FDroid. I use it to send photographs taken on the phone directly to my Unraid box, where I have Syncthing running inside Docker. You can set up Syncthing to only connect via wifi, rather than using mobile data, which I've done. Some of the server contents are then accessible via NextCloud.

Could you run NextCloud and Syncthing on your server via Docker containers? I would imagine to sync the config of the Android device, you'd need one that's been rooted and a custom ROM on there.

SirConfused · 27 Apr 2022 at 07:22

TangoEchoAlpha said:
@SirConfused SyncThing does have an Android client. I have it installed on my Pixel2, downloaded via FDroid. I use it to send photographs taken on the phone directly to my Unraid box, where I have Syncthing running inside Docker. You can set up Syncthing to only connect via wifi, rather than using mobile data, which I've done. Some of the server contents are then accessible via NextCloud.

Could you run NextCloud and Syncthing on your server via Docker containers? I would imagine to sync the config of the Android device, you'd need one that's been rooted and a custom ROM on there.

I got started with the process yesterday and just ran syncthing direct on my server. Seems easy enough imo, just need to get the folders set up now. Getting the config setup is secondary for the moment, the important thing is getting the photos done for now.