Always had problems with my file storage. Tried everything like Apple Time Capsule and other backup solutions, but Dropbox is the best way to backup your files. The best part is that if you fail to pay, Dropbox never deletes your files. They just downgrade your Dropbox account.

I have been using Dropbox business since before Corona lockdown. What a relief and peace of mind. No more management of so much data. No more management of NAS drives. No more time waste. Only focus on work. I have around 12.5TB data so far and when uploaded to Dropbox, everything just sits there and Dropbox has a beautiful search, which searches millions of files in seconds.

Even if they allow you to store as much as you want of as much size as you want, I needed a tool like rclone to backup everything to Dropbox and deleted from local disk drives. I have around 20TB on portable USB disk drives which are not even being used anymore. I cannot visualise what to do with them.

As I have millions of files, it was almost impossible for Dropbox desktop client to work, so rclone proved to be very handy. I could also encrypt important files which I hesitated to keep in the cloud. So, I created 64 bit keys for encryption via rclone and uploaded them to a totally separate folder.

Cannot trust keeping Dropbox keys on remote VPS/Servers so to take server backups to Dropbox via rclone, I needed to create Dropbox Apps in Dropbox developer console with App only folder mode. Then, configured new App secret and key for rclone on server and started backups. pm2 is a very important node project which when installed globally, allows us to do things on a recurring basis. I could use cron or a never ending bash script, but pm2 is an always favourite. So, I used pm2 to configure periodic server backups to Dropbox via rclone.

For syncing regular project folders for working between devices, I had to create another Dropbox account and add it to my Dropbox Business team. This proved to be useful, now I can move any old folder from admin Dropbox account to team folder and use it between multiple Dropbox accounts. Worth to mention, that Dropbox sharing is also a robust feature which I can use to share with my clients. For sending large files to client I can use new Dropbox Transfer feature.

For serving static files for my clients, I tried VPS storage servers, surge.sh, github and many other services like CDN etc. But, my new setup with Dropbox is by far the best. So, I have moved all static files into Dropbox to serve them publicly and use everywhere for clients’ work even to show demo. For serving the files, I wrote this small Cloudflare worker script: https://github.com/animatedcreativity/cloudflare-dropbox-cdn-build which allows me to convert any folder in Dropbox as a static server. I just had to add subdomain name for Cloudflare worker and script did the rest of the magic. For providing Dropbox access to this script, I created a separate App and added the access token. Now, I can even write JS or JSON in Dropbox folders and use them in browsers as the script also takes care of CORS policy.

There is much more to write how Dropbox made my life so easy. I can fully focus on work without having to manage my storage life.