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CloudDrive and Plex


Zanena

Question

I'm very interested in getting a license for both CloudDrive and Drivepool, but I have a couple questions on how the software would work with my setup.

I have a dedicated windows server, for over 2 years I've been using it with as my media streaming platform, but as of recently free space started to run out and so I began looking for any potential method to increase my storage, I found out about Gsuite and .edu accounts and now I'd like to to use the cloud as my main storage for future files. I own 1 legit .edu account (from my Uni) and other 3, which I bought.

Now what I'd like to do is link one of the fake .edu accounts with Plex and keep the others as a backup in case the main one's domain is closed by google (each account is from a different vendor and has a different domain), now you may ask why wouldn't you use your legit .edu account, the thing is in 1 year I should graduate and I'm not sure if i'll be allowed to keep using the account, also i've read online some university may require the student to delete some data if they notice the space used is too much.

CloudDrive seems like a perfect solution for my needs, but I have 2 doubts, I'd like to be cleared:

1) In case I want to change machine, is it possible to create a virtual drive on it by linking the old google drive? If so how would that work?

2) Would it be possible to upload the files through CloudDrive on my main drive account and then copy those files over to other drive accounts? This way if some account gets banned I don't have to upload many TBs of data again to the new .edu account I'd buy (which wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't the 750Gb daily cap). 

Thanks in advance for the help.

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8 hours ago, Zanena said:

Oh ok thanks for the suggestion, regarding the Gsuite account is it okay if I regisiter one with my real infos? 

Yeah, it's perfectly fine. If you fake it, you'll risk having it terminated for fraud. Google doesn't care what you put on your space as long as it isn't facially illegal (read: child pornography), and CloudDrive is completely encrypted anyway. The only thing I've ever heard of Google getting mad at is uploading raw copy-written video files and sharing them with others right off of your space. Don't do that. Using CloudDrive is perfectly fine, though. And CloudDrive respects all of Google's throttling requests etc, so the account won't get API banned unless you exceed the 750GB/day limit, in which case you'll be locked out of the upload API until it resets. 

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Don't use or pay for the fake .edu accounts. They will absolutely, 100%, get terminated. You can simply pay for your own GSuite for business account and still have access to unlimited storage (they advertise that you need at least 5 users, but even a single user has unlimited as of now). It's only $10 a month, it's unlimited storage, and, to my knowledge, I haven't heard of a single one of these accounts being terminated. The .edu fakes, on the other hand, are terminated all the time. Not to mention that they're just run by shady people willing to do shady things and they shouldn't be trusted at all. 

Your university account is subject to your institutions policies, but I have never heard of an institution requiring some arbitrary data threshold for their users. I don't even know why they would. The terms of Google for Education don't place any such limits on them, and there's really no reason that they should care how much data anyone uses. Google takes care of it all, and it's actually completely free for the university no matter how much data the students use. You'd have to have some draconian and completely unnecessary IT policies at your institution for them to arbitrarily enforce policies that do not affect them in any way, and do not cost them any more money. They have effectively no responsibility for the data or its maintenance at all. It's just a service that Google provides to educational institutions because of their background as a university research project. 

Now, that being said,  not all institutions permit alumni to keep GSuite accounts after they graduate at all, or vice versa. My institution only uses GSuite for alumni, for example, which is what I use for my Plex. Our student accounts were another email provider entirely. I've also heard of schools that will provide you with a *different* GSuite account for alumni. I'm sure you can contact your school's IT department to verify their policies around the accounts, in any case. 

Now, as far as your questions go:

Quote

1) In case I want to change machine, is it possible to create a virtual drive on it by linking the old google drive? If so how would that work?

It's important to understand that your CloudDrive is completely attached to the account that you upload your data to. Again: Do not use a purchased, fake .edu account for your CloudDrive. Once the data is uploaded to that location, it is gone as soon as you lose the account. For good. You would have to set up multiple CloudDrive drives on multiple accounts and mirror them to have any sort of redundancy to protect against this, and you'll be doing X times the uploading of the same data for each account you need to do this for, as well as increasing the overhead on your server. Just don't do it. Use a legit .edu account or pay for GSuite for business. 

But CloudDrive drives are portable. As long as the integrity of the GSuite account remains intact, you can simply detach it from one machine and reattach it to a new machine. Takes less than 5 minutes to do. 

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 2) Would it be possible to upload the files through CloudDrive on my main drive account and then copy those files over to other drive accounts? This way if some account gets banned I don't have to upload many TBs of data again to the new .edu account I'd buy (which wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't the 750Gb daily cap). 

As covered above, no. And simply do not buy .edu accounts. Why are you even supporting those people and their shady fraud? If you're willing to pay, GSuite for business isn't that expensive. You would have to either upload the data twice from a mirrored drive (which you *could* do with DrivePool, if you wanted), or reupload the data from a local backup when (not if) the account gets nuked. 

Ultimately, though, CloudDrive works wonderfully for Plex and I've been using it for exactly that purpose for over two years now. Just stay as far away as you can from the people setting up fraudulent .edus for free and them selling them on the internet. For the record, I have around 215 TB on my .legit .edu account and I haven't heard a peep from either Google or my institution. 

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1 hour ago, srcrist said:

You can simply pay for your own GSuite for business account and still have access to unlimited storage (they advertise that you need at least 5 users, but even a single user has unlimited as of now). It's only $10 a month, it's unlimited storage, and, to my knowledge, I haven't heard of a single one of these accounts being terminated. The .edu fakes, on the other hand, are terminated all the time. Not to mention that they're just run by shady people willing to do shady things and they shouldn't be trusted at all. 

Thanks for your answer, I have thought about paying for a Gsuite account, but i've read on Reddit some users got their 10$ Gsuite terminated without any notice for exceding the 1TB limit, that is something I'd like to avoid, I'm willing to spend 40$ and get 5 users but I fear Google could  either terminate the account for some reason or change the pricing, forcing me to move many TBs of data in a short amount of time. But after doing an extensive reasearch I think a 40$ Gsuite is the less risky and easier way to do what I want.

 

2 hours ago, srcrist said:

As covered above, no. And simply do not buy .edu accounts. Why are you even supporting those people and their shady fraud? If you're willing to pay, GSuite for business isn't that expensive. You would have to either upload the data twice from a mirrored drive (which you *could* do with DrivePool, if you wanted), or reupload the data from a local backup when (not if) the account gets nuked. 

I tried coping the StableBit folder to another drive, then unmounted the drive and created a new one linked the to second drive account and it worked, I had uploaded the files just once, but was able to use them on 2 different drives (not mounted at the same time tho).

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 i've read on Reddit some users got their 10$ Gsuite terminated without any notice for exceding the 1TB limit, that is something I'd like to avoid,

That is absolutely not why those accounts were terminated. Google isn't going to terminate an account for exceeding a limit that they could easily enforce with technical measures if they actually wanted to. Plenty of people have GSuite for business accounts well in excess of 1TB and they aren't getting terminated. The people who said that are either mistaken or lying. I don't know what threads you're talking about, but I can tell you from personal experience that Google does not terminate accounts for using too much space. They could easily simply stop you from uploading anything else, but they don't. Don't worry about it. Of course, anyone who is using an account via another institution, like a university, is at the whims of the polices of their institution, but that's a different story. 

Quote

I tried coping the StableBit folder to another drive, then unmounted the drive and created a new one linked the to second drive account and it worked, I had uploaded the files just once, but was able to use them on 2 different drives (not mounted at the same time tho).

 

I think I might have misunderstood your desire here. You can duplicate the content on one google account on another google account and mount the drive, but I'm not sure what you'd gain by doing it this way. If you simply share the content from one account to another, and the original account gets terminated, the shared content will still vanish. So you'd still have to upload all of the data twice, whether by downloading it all from one drive and uploading it again, or simply by just making a second CloudDrive and mirroring it with DrivePool or some other utility. Personally, I would suggest the latter. It's an automated process and you don't need to worry about moving the data yourself. The different UUIDs generated for the two drives are irrelevant if you're mirroring it at a filesystem level. 

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13 hours ago, srcrist said:

I think I might have misunderstood your desire here. You can duplicate the content on one google account on another google account and mount the drive, but I'm not sure what you'd gain by doing it this way. If you simply share the content from one account to another, and the original account gets terminated, the shared content will still vanish. So you'd still have to upload all of the data twice, whether by downloading it all from one drive and uploading it again, or simply by just making a second CloudDrive and mirroring it with DrivePool or some other utility. Personally, I would suggest the latter. It's an automated process and you don't need to worry about moving the data yourself. The different UUIDs generated for the two drives are irrelevant if you're mirroring it at a filesystem level. 

Oh ok thanks for the suggestion, regarding the Gsuite account is it okay if I regisiter one with my real infos? 

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I know this post is a couple months old, just wanted to give an update. Gsuite Business is increasing their prices from 10 dollars a month to 12 dollars a month beginning April 2. Still worth it though for unlimited space.

Zanena, yes you can register with your real info if you are registering yourself, you only need 1 user for unlimited even though it says 5 is required. You will need to have a domain name though to link the account, you can either use your own or purchase one from them during the setup which is cheap, i believe its like 12 dollars a year through them for a domain name.

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