Dropbox and OneDrive

Dropbox and OneDrive are fantastic cloud storage platforms. They both do similar things, storing files in the cloud and allowing sharing of files to people external of the business, or allowing access to files remotely for those employed.

Dropbox and OneDrive have one small tiny flaw, when sharing data with multiple people, whom all have the Dropbox or OneDrive synchronisation applications installed, can suddenly fill a user’s hard drive, especially those who are using  Solid-State Drives (SSD), or hybrid tablets like the Microsoft Surface.

We have a few customers who users use Dropbox or OneDrive or both to delivery information to the business contractors.  This is great, but that little problem with Dropbox and OneDrive then become apparent.

For example;

Customer A has Three Project Managers who work with a number of external consultants and contractors, who are freelance and have their own equipment.

The customers Project Managers are continually uploading new content to folders in Dropbox and OneDrive to delivery information to the businesses external contractors.  This is great, but that little problem with Dropbox and OneDrive then become apparent.

The issue is that all the Project Managers have smallish SSD and they are continually becoming full, as the Project Managers are not removing old data from Dropbox and OneDrive.

A solution is to have a hybrid approach, that provides the local Project Manager with a Network Drive connected to their PCs and then that does all the relevant syncrohisation work to the cloud.

With a simple change in hardware, as device like a Datto Network Attached Storage, can help achieve this solution

A solution is to have a hybrid approach, that provides the local Project Manager with a Network Drive connected to their PCs and then that does all the relevant syncrohisation work to the cloud.

With company Data now located on your internal NAS, and utilising something similar to DropBox and OneDrive, a solution that has both a web interface and a local client synchronisation software.  The local Project Managers now store everything on the NAS, this means no synchronisation from their machine, no issues with the synchronisation software consuming all the space on their local hard drive.  Plus, with the correct NAS, like the Datto, Cloud backups can also be performed, providing additional protection for the data stored on the NAS device.

The issue is that all the Project Managers have smallish SSD and they are continually becoming full, as the Project Managers are not removing old data from Dropbox and OneDrive.

Being Partners with both Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner and Datto we see both sides of cloud file sharing, in the beautiful simplicity of allowing access easily to others, to the issues of hard drives becoming full.

If you are a victim of file cloud bloat, see if you can achieve this hybrid approach or contact the experts and have a chat with us on this topic.

Have a look at our guide on Datto Hardware.