DropBox functionality on my own FTP?

apps
#1

I’ve recently fallen in love with DropBox. Even just the free 2 gig option has rendered my flash drive useless in terms of carrying stuff to/from work. It’s perfect for sharing project files between all my computers and laptops and keeping documents up to date. However now I am to the point where I have filled my 2 gig quota and am constantly having to pick and choose what to keep up there. They offer larger capacities, but their prices are outrageous.

I already pay for oodles more web storage here at Dreamhost, so there’s no way I would pay an additional fee for DropBox storage. However I love the simplicity of the drag-n-drop desktop folder and automatic synchronization that is offered by DropBox. Does anybody know of any options that will operate similarly to this but allow you to plug in your own FTP info?

I currently use FireFTP as my quick-access FTP client, but even that is cumbersome compared to the automatic nature of DropBox. I’ve also looked at Tango Drop Box which seemed promising, but it appears to support uploading only.

Thanks guys!

#2

I have yet to find something that will do this, and I’ve done a lot of looking. I believe that the biggest hurdle is that the server end needs to keep track of sync data for all clients.

And that “oodles” of space you have is for a website. The Backups user (a separate FTP user) is limited to 50 Gigs, which still a quite an admirable account.

#3

Dropbox does a lot of really clever things behind the scenes to “sync” files between your machine and the back-end storage. It’s much more complex than just letting you access files that are stored on a server (ever noticed that it still works when you’re not online?), and I suspect that Dropbox has put a lot of time into making this syncing process work smoothly. Getting that sort of behavior over FTP wouldn’t be easy.

#4

It’s totally understandable that they don’t want you to use tons of gigs for personal storage, but it’s funny I’ve been a customer for 6 years and never knew that. I figured web storage is web storage and it’s all up to you.

Anyway, I’ve briefly tried using the ftp:// interface with Windows Explorer, so I suppose that could be worth a second look for the simple drag-n-drop function. Using the Backup space, of course.