Hi Subramaniyam

There are no limits on cloud storage with Google Drive and Dropbox. What happens is when you reach the limits offered with your free account, you have the opportunity to move to a paid model, where you pay for as much, or as little space as you need. If you want to collaborate, you might also pay for additional collaborators.

As an alternative, you could try using OwnCloud (I have added the link below), which offers a large varieties of differing options. While you can have verious paid models, you can also have a free community model. You can run it anywhere you like, sucking in data from Dropbox, Google Drive, various public cloud sources, or your own hardware. It provides good levels of security, you can encrypt your data, and you can allow collaborators structured access to your filestore, ie allowing some folders to be accessed, while others are restricted. IF you want maximum performance, you can run it on your own server, however you can also run it on your desktop if you have large enough storage for your needs. You can also use SFTP externally to access your files from elsewhere.

I have personally used it on both servers, desktops and laptops. While the server version is certainly faster, you do need a reasonal level of expertise to handle setting up a server for it to run on. However, you should easily be able to install and run it on your desktop or laptop.

However, if want to synchronise files on the OwnCloud cloud servers, you will have a limit on how much data you can use before you start having to pay for it.

However, whatever your requirements are, you will find something to suit you, and if you have used Dropbox, you will be very familiar with the way it works.

There are other simple options you can choose, such as using an FTP, FTPS and SFTP client like Filezilla, which is particularly good if you have a server at the core of it, but you can share desktop to desktop (again a link is provided below). However, you will have to place considerable trust in your collaborators, as you are effectively allowing them into your personal desktop. Of course, if that is not an issues, it is very fast, especially where you are using a server for the sharing, subject to constraints on your internet speed and the hardware it will be using. However, you can set up a linux server at no cost using older hardware which will still provide very good performance. It is a bit less intuitive than OwnCloud, and your users can easily delete files as well as copy them, unless you take suitable precautions.

The bottom line is that you will need to compromise on some, or several aspects of whichever system you go for, such as price, performance, security and so on.

Remember, the system you choose can be as secure as you are prepared to make it. Above all, the choice is yours.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Bob

enc

https://owncloud.org/

Dear Dr. Duncan,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am currently trying out OwnCloud.

The primary purpose of using OSF is that it becomes quite difficult to manage projects and components, especially manuscripts and data files when using individual software for specific purposes. OSF is a great platform that combines all my requirements in a single piece of software.

The reason I am concerned about public and private access is that I had a particularly bad experience with Benchling before, when my sequences were inadvertently set to public instead of private. While OSF has a single button for public and private access control, I believe that it is always better to store my data on my local PC and back up my data to a secure server that can be accessed via FTP over the internet. This way I don't lose privacy or accessibility.

Please do let me know if you have any other suggestions too, and once again, thank you very much for taking the time to reply.

Subramaniyam

Hi Subramaniyam

Sounds like you have had your troubles with the setup you were using.

Security is always in issue, and you will usually have to work hard to keep yourself ahead of the game.

If you want to really keep it simple, secure and reliable, why not cut out the internet altogether, and run a simple NAS box plugged in via your local LAN, which you can access from your desktop. The NAS box would act as a local data server, and you can communicate to it very speedily via LAN. You will get far faster transfer rates than you will via a USB conection, even at USB speeds.

If budget is an issue, you can build your own NAS drive from an old desktop or server. You can get some really fast 6TB SATA drives nowadays which are not too expensive. Use direct connections to the motherboard, and if necessary install a hardware adapter for the SATA drver to the motherboard to bring it more up to date. In this case, simply install your preferred flavour of Linux. You can run it as a server, or as a desktop, as you prefer. Install Filezilla to both machines and watch the files fly across before your eyes.

There are just so many possible ways you can handle this, you just need to be clear what your requirements are.

Should you need any further advice, once you have thought a bit more about it, feel free to ask, and I can make a few more suggestions for you.

Regards

Bob

Hi Subramaniyam

I wonder if you can recommend me other tools with similar features to OSF. So,  OSF seems ti be a good technology to manage projects but does it have competitors in the academic world?

Regards

Hello Nestor,

Unfortunately, OSF is the best one that is available right now, primarily because it is free and is a complete package for most tasks. 

I have not found any comparable package yet with all features. You can try and assemble a toolkit using individual software but it is feasible to try and integrate the data between the tools.

Do let me know if you are searching for something specific.

Best, 

Subramaniyam