Free cloud storage for a club?

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plnelson

5 posts

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#232249 6-Apr-2018 15:47

I'm a member of a small (~15-20 people) club that needs to store some documents for all the members to share and access. Everyone, or at least many people, should have write privileges (and yes it will be backed up regularly in case of accidents). The documents don't need to be large - total storage of <100MB should be fine.

At first we thought about Dropbox but the free version of Dropbox only allows 1 account per PC user-login, i.e., if I already have a personal Dropbox account I can't also use the club one. Can anyone suggest some good alternatives? Thanks in advance.

MurrayM

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#1989583 6-Apr-2018 15:51

Google Drive? You can then share the documents with those that need it.

Dynamic

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#1989584 6-Apr-2018 15:56

There is non-profit pricing available for Office 365 which includes OneDrive for Business.

However the file sync reliability is poor in my experience (with large volumes of data) when compared with DropBox and similar.

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plnelson

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#1989590 6-Apr-2018 16:13

MurrayM:

Google Drive? You can then share the documents with those that need it.

But does Google Drive have the same problem as Dropbox, i.e., can someone simultaneously access a personal Google Drive account and the club one on the same PC at the same time?

The problem with Dropbox appears to be that if you are logged in to your PC as Peter it stores exactly one set of proxy information in C:\users\Peter so it can't handle more than one dropbox folder per PC user (for the free product). Does Google Drive get around this?

timmmay

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#1989603 6-Apr-2018 16:16

Create a free Google account and use Google docs. Any number of people can view / edit it at the same time using a web browser.

evnafets

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#1989626 6-Apr-2018 17:08

Take another look at Dropbox.

You can "share" a folder.

So if you have a dropbox account for this club, share the folder from that to your personal account.
Only the files in that "shared" folder are accessible to other club members (i.e. your own stuff is private)

The downside is that your usage/space is calculated from your personal stuff + all shared folders.
If the club files are going to be <100MB I don't think that should be too much of a problem though.

plnelson

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#1989627 6-Apr-2018 17:09

timmmay:

Create a free Google account and use Google docs. Any number of people can view / edit it at the same time using a web browser.

Thank you but what about the question of multiple accounts on the same PC? Also our documents could be any kind of files and not just in formats compatible with Google Docs. So we don't need to edit them online; we just want to store them in the cloud so everyone in the club can access them.

plnelson

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Wannabe Geek

#1989631 6-Apr-2018 17:22

evnafets:

Take another look at Dropbox.

You can "share" a folder.

So if you have a dropbox account for this club, share the folder from that to your personal account.
Only the files in that "shared" folder are accessible to other club members (i.e. your own stuff is private)

The downside is that your usage/space is calculated from your personal stuff + all shared folders.
If the club files are going to be <100MB I don't think that should be too much of a problem though.

Are you saying that we designate one person to share a folder from his personal Dropbox account to the other members?

So if I already have a Dropbox account of my own, and someone shares a folder from their account with me, where does it appear in my Dropbox folder?

This sounds promising but I'm unclear on the details.

Thanks in advance for further clarification.

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mentalinc

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#1989661 6-Apr-2018 18:55

Yes thats how it works, just shows up as a folder in the root from memory.

test it out you have nothing to lose?

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timmmay

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#1989684 6-Apr-2018 19:03

plnelson:

Thank you but what about the question of multiple accounts on the same PC? Also our documents could be any kind of files and not just in formats compatible with Google Docs. So we don't need to edit them online; we just want to store them in the cloud so everyone in the club can access them.

This is generally irrelevant as it's entirely web browser based, there's no sync. You can be logged into multiple accounts. You can upload any file type you like.

plnelson

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#1989832 7-Apr-2018 05:50

mentalinc:

Yes thats how it works, just shows up as a folder in the root from memory.

test it out you have nothing to lose?

Not sure what you mean by "a folder in the root from memory". This is on a PC running Windows so there is no "root" like on Linux (i.e., '/', e.g., '/usr', '/bin', etc) When I click on my Dropbox icon on my PC desktop I get a Windows Explorer folder set to the path "C:\Users\Peter\Dropbox".

So if someone were to share a folder in their own personal Dropbox, would I see that as a subfolder in my dropbox file-explorer window? I.e., if Larry were to set up his own Dropbox account from his PC and create a folder in it called "foo", and share it to me, would I see a folder called "foo" with a path "C:\Users\Peter\Dropbox\foo"? If so, that sounds like it will work for us.

Thanks for your help on this.

mentalinc

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#1991041 7-Apr-2018 13:50

Thats how it works, root of the dropbox folder.

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evnafets

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#1991256 7-Apr-2018 21:06

Indeed. If someone shared "foo", it would show up as "foo" in your Dropbox folder.

Alternatively if you log in to Dropbox.com, and go to "My Files" you can see the list of folders you have, and who has access to them. There is a menu option for "New Shared Folder". You can create it yourself and then grant access to the other members.

The sharing is for that folder and everything underneath it. Nothing else in your personal dropbox is visible to other members of that "share"

Or don't believe me and go read the dropbox documentation at : https://www.dropbox.com/help/files-folders/share-with-others

pom532

149 posts

Master Geek

#1991330 8-Apr-2018 07:34

You can sign into multiple google drive accounts on one computer. I've currently got three different accounts signed in.