Dropbox Question...

So I've downloaded Dropbox, and I've gotta say...

It's a jazzy lil' program...

However, I got an idea and was unsure if I'd work out... I tried asking on their forum, but it's shut down currently.
I scanned their PDF file to see about the idea, no such luck... I even did a google search... and still nothing...

here's the idea...

I download Dropbox to my External Hard Drive that way, everything on it is available to me on ALL devices...laptop, tv and iphone
with out having to plug it in.

(this was my idea, if there is a better method, I'd love to hear it.)

 

But you would still have to share a folder for your other devices to access this external drive or the dropbox folder on your computer, is your external drive connected to your PC via USB or are we talking a router connection?

 

SIDE COMMENT: Do you realize the danger to your privacy when using such utilities putting personal information from all your devices in 'one bag.'

See my blog post INTERNET - Guarding Personal Information which came from a PBS Newshour article on this issue, includes the full video.

 

The main issue with this idea, is that the only files avaliable to other systems through DropBox are those file that have been uploaded to the Dropbox account. A standard free account is 2GB and then to upgrade that amount, the pricing shoots upwards very very quickly.

So in order to make the files on your external avaliable to your main system, you would have to have enough Dropbox space to hold all of the data on your external as it is essentially a backup/sync service.

If you do still wish to persue this, a system I set up whilst working on University projects over multiple computers, is to create the main folder on the dropbox system, then create a 'link' to a ghost folder on my systems. These allow me to access to files stored in the folder in Dropbox and if any changes are made to them, they are synced and saved instantly to the cloud.

There are better alternatives, but I am not able to research into them right now, hopefully someone else can advise you on a better idea, other than setting up a file server.

 

I don't know if this would help, but at the hospital I work at we have to use tigertext to send patient info by text (HIPAA compliance), but recently Tigertext added a Dropbox feature that allows you to send files to Dropbox, that will auto delete from Dropbox after a period of time you set.

I don't know if this would help make your one Dropbox for all your devices concept more secure, but you might want to look Tigertext up or any other app/software that would help secure your Dropbox.

I agree with Teknomage, putting everything in one Box seems really dangerous, so you would need to protect it as much as possible. Better yet, it might be better if you don't do it.