Local+Cloud Best-of-both-worlds Setup

[Oliver]

I'm using DrivePool to try and get the "best of both worlds".  This is with two different drive setups.

 

"Big" setup - very large external local storage with 2x data matched to a large cloud drive.

 

With this setup, my goal is fast local access all the time while at home, while still having slower cloud-based access when traveling.

 

"Light" setup - small local storage with 2x data matching to a small cloud drive.

 

Here I am just using the mirroring to protect against drive failure.  Though I would also like the local mirror to be useable when I am offline, such as on a plane.

 

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Simply using a cloud drive with a full-size cache would probably also meet the "big" requirements, albeit without the 2x backup.

 

Using the cloud drive with a full-size cache also means I can't access files while offline.

 

However, removing drives that are active in a pool seems to be not recommended so switching from "home" to "travel" requires that I remove the external drive and cloud drives from their pools.  Then the internal "cloud drive" on local storage still is accessible.

 

Is anyone trying to do something similar?  I am curious what others' setups are.

 

Worst case, the small drive solution could instead be to use encfs over locally a synced Google Drive folder.  The large drive could then use a full-size cache on the external and failover with a rebuilt smaller internal drive cache - though I wouldn't want to do that often.

[Oliver]

Just to add, from a thread on the CloudDrive forum it seems external drives will not be allowed for cache in future - so the full size cache for the "big" drive is not an option.

 

This could end up being, use GDrive + insync + encfs and no Stablebit at all.  Not a complaint, as my use case is definitely a bit off the menu, but disappointing.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Honestly, for most of the functionality that you're talking about, I have found that "Plex" or "Emby" manage this nicely.  It's meant for videos mostly, and has a "sync" option to store data locally (for offline access). 

 

The reason that I mention this, is that to mount the drive elsewhere, you need to detach it from the previous system.  If you're not home, that could be problematic, at best. 

 

 

However, removing drives that are active in a pool seems to be not recommended so switching from "home" to "travel" requires that I remove the external drive and cloud drives from their pools.  Then the internal "cloud drive" on local storage still is accessible.

 

As long as you're moving ALL of the drives, this isn't an issue, actually. 

 

But that's not the case here, is it? 

 

If you want to move the CloudDrive disk around, you'd be best off copying/syncing the contents from the pool to the drive, so it's not going to affect the pool at all. 

 

 

 

Just to add, from a thread on the CloudDrive forum it seems external drives will not be allowed for cache in future - so the full size cache for the "big" drive is not an option.

 

This could end up being, use GDrive + insync + encfs and no Stablebit at all.  Not a complaint, as my use case is definitely a bit off the menu, but disappointing.

 

Yeah, no removable drives, as these may periodically unmount from the system.  This is problematic in general, but the calls we make to the cache drive are essentially paging calls (eg, what the system uses for the page file), so being surprise removed WILL cause a BSOD (this is the best/only way we can handle this sort of event, without causing corruption, the system to hang or the ...worse). 

 

You can still use large drives, but they have to be internal.