I have a 48TB NFS in my basement. Although I have 48TB of usable space, RAID6 has allowed me to (only!) Although I only have 36TB of usable storage, that is still a lot. I was wrong. I ripped DVDs and Blurays. Instead of spending a few thousand dollars on a new NAS I decided to host my files in a cloud. It costs $12 per month and I have found it to be a viable alternative for local storage after six months. It mounts exactly like a local NAS.
G Suite for Business: A Look at G Suite
There are many cloud-based storage options available. However, they are either very limited in storage or very expensive per gigabyte. One solution however offers unlimited storage at a fixed monthly price. Google Drive
You must purchase a Business G Suite with five users to get unlimited storage. Unlimited storage costs $60 per month for each user, which is $12 per user. It’s still a ridiculously low $60 per month for this much storage. However, if you open a Business G Suite Account with one user (12/mo), you still get unlimited space. Although it might seem like an error Google would quickly correct, it’s been this way for years. I currently use more than 40TB on my Google Drive and have only one user on my G Suite for business.
Rclone and Google Drive
Google Drive is a nice service, but it’s not something that everyone wants to use as bulk storage. It’s slow, clumsy and confusing. Google does offer “Google Drive Stream”, however, due to local caching you still need local storage or get “not enough space” errors.
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Rclone makes it easy to access Google Drive directly from your desktop. It allows you to create access via Keypair, so there’s no annoying logging in every time. You can even mount your remote share on your own local filesystem. In true Steve Jobs fashion, you can also encrypt files and directories at any time. This protects your privacy even if your data is on another person’s hard drive. It’s amazing. Rclone? Open Source and completely free!
How to Mount a Google Drive Locally With Rclone
Rclone can be found in most Linux distributions. There are also Windows and OSX versions that work the same way. This video shows you how to quickly create a share and mount it onto the local filesystem. It may seem too good to be true, but it is possible. It’s been a month now and I’m still impressed. It’s reliable and strong enough to support several users simultaneously writing and reading.
It is possible to make your own API for your application. This will improve the performance. Although it doesn’t cost extra, it can be a bit confusing to click.
SPOTO offers Rclone Training
I have more in-depth Rclone training. You can access the skill directly if you are already a SPOTO subscriber.
You can view my Everything Linux course overview, which includes Rclone skills and many other topics, if you are not yet a SPOTO subscriber. If you’d like to see my training, sign up for a free trial. snar.co/cbt-everythinglinux
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