Hi. I am currently using google drive mounted with rsync (encrypted) to stream files over my VPS since my VPS provider charges a lot for extra storage compared to google. I have offline backups of the said data at home
I currently have a 100GB google drive plan and it’s working suprisingly great. Also it’s cheap in my country due to regional pricing
Now, as I learned, Google keeps your files for 2 years after you cancel your extra storage subscription. It also doesn’t allow you to upload anything which locks up Gmail but that doesn’t matter if it’s an alt account. So, can I just create an alt account, buy a 1 month subscription, upload everything, cancel it, then read it using rclone? Does Google restrict api access (for rclone) on drives with expired subscriptions?
Yeah I know I’m stretching this a bit too far but I just wanna know
Tbh you get jerked around less with paid plans. I’m happy with Hetzner Storage Box. I have 5TB there for 10 euro/month. I’d never use Google Drive. borgbase.com has a 10GB “free forever” plan and I could see parking some stuff there, but 10GB is pretty small and IDK the conditions. Why not use a VPS provider with better storage options?
Well, my VPS is used mainly by my friends for Minecraft servers, collaboration, file sharing, streaming and pretty much everything cloud related
Most of them live in Istanbul and my VPS provider is one of the most reliable and affordable providers located in Istanbul.
Unfortunately, Hertzner doesn’t work for me because their prices are astronomical for me compared to Google’s regional pricing for Turkey (40TL/mo = 1.1USD/mo for 2TB)
I just wanna exploit the service as much as possible since I just don’t rely on them. Electricity prices are too high for homelab but maybe I could set up a solar powered server if I save a little (I’m a student, I don’t have much money, but I like the hobby)
I’ll probably try accessing cancelled drive account with rclone and find out if it’s possible
1.1 USD/mo for 2TB is basically a giveaway or free plan, i.e. you’re the product not the customer. So I’d be suspicious. How much storage are you looking for? Hetzner unfortunately jumps from 3.2 euro/1TB to 11 euro/5TB. So 2TB is kind of a bad spot on that scale. But if google drive is working for you and your stuff is encrypted, why not keep it?
Yup I know I am the product. That’s why we are encrypting everything with AES256 before upload using rclone’s crypt remote
I just don’t trust any cloud provider tbh. Performance hit from AES256 is very insignificant and it provides solid privacy regardless of provider. Might as well get the cheap one
Possibility of Google keeping API access up after cancellation is why I asked this question. To learn what happens when to rclone Google drive mount after an expiration
I wouldn’t count on google drive doing anything in particular after expiration, unless that is expressly part of the product description. Just because you can observe it happening now doesn’t mean you can expect it to keep happening. For that matter, Google cancels products all the time. So I wouldn’t even rely on the paid plan not being withdrawn at some inconvenient moment. If you really want to use it, then best strategy is probably use it as long as it lasts, but have some plan B in mind if it goes away.
Oneprovider.com shows lots of offers in Istanbul, though servers are expensive there compared to a place like Hetzner:
https://oneprovider.com/search?&cities[]=62&price=0&price_max=9999999999999999&price_any=0
Let us know how it goes-for Science!
I made a 100GB alt account and uploaded 25GB of files through an encrypted mount. We’ll see what happens when I cancel it tomorrow
The other cost to home lab serving lots of data is internet limits.
My internet will throttle after X terabytes (I forget the limit), whether upstream or down, and of course upload is slower.
It’s like playing a game of tetris with costs, performance, stability, reliability, flexibility, privacy, security, and personal effort.
I’m not saying don’t have a home lab, just that there are things to consider. It’s worth the effort for me, though I’m working to move some things to cloud storage (e.g. Hetzner/Storj.io) and a VPS to get some of the bandwidth off my connection, and remove my home internet as a bottleneck or failure point.
If you want cheap encrypted storage you can run a Nephele server with encryption and something like Backblaze B2.
