Unlimited Local Storage with Google Drive and Rclone

I have a 48TB NAS in my basement. Granted, thanks to RAID6 I only (only!) have 36TB of usable space, but still, I assumed that would last me forever. Thanks to ripping DVDs and Blurays, I was so very, very wrong. Rather than spend a few thousand dollars on a new NAS, however, I decided to host my files in the cloud. The storage is unlimited for $12/month, and after 6 months or so, I can tell you it's a viable alternative to local storage. Plus, it mounts exactly like a local NAS!

A Look at G Suite for Business

There are plenty of cloud-based storage solutions available, but they are all either very limited in storage space, or very expensive per GB. There is one solution, however, that provides unlimited storage for a set monthly price. Google Drive.

Officially, in order to get unlimited storage, you must get a Business G Suite with 5 users. Each user is $12/month, and so you'd have to pay $60/month to get unlimited storage. Honestly, $60 a month for that much space is still insanely affordable, but if you open a Business G Suite account with a single user (so only $12/mo), you still get unlimited storage. It might seem like an error Google would quickly fix, but it's been that way for years. I'm currently using more than 40TB of space on my Google Drive, and only have a single user on my G Suite for Business.

Using Rclone with Google Drive

Google Drive is nice, but let's be honest, no one wants to use their web interface as bulk storage. It's clumsy, slow, and as much as I love Google, the organization is confusing at best. Google does provide "Google Drive Stream", but due to local caching, you still need local storage or you get "not enough space" errors.

Thankfully, Rclone makes direct access to Google Drive seamless. It allows you to create access via keypair (no annoying logging in all the time), and even lets you mount your remote share on your local filesystem. And in true Steve Jobs "one more thing" fashion, it also allows you to encrypt files and directories in real time, so your privacy is protected even if your data is stored on someone else's hard drive. It's seriously amazing. And Rclone? Open Source and totally free!

How to Mount a Google Drive Locally with Rclone

Rclone is in most Linux distributions, and even has Windows and OSX versions available that all work similarly. In this video, I show you how to quickly set up a share and mount it on the local filesystem. If it seems too good to be true, yeah, I get that. But I've been using it for months and I've been more than impressed. It's been reliable, and robust enough to support a handful of users reading and writing at the same time.

You can do a bit of extra work to create your own application API, which will make the performance more robust. It doesn't cost any extra money, but it's admittedly a bit of confusing clicking.

Rclone Training from CBT Nuggets

I have more in-depth training on Rclone. If you're already a CBT Nuggets subscriber, you can go to snar.co/cbt-rclone to get to the skill directly.

If you're not yet a subscriber at CBT Nuggets, you can see my Everything Linux course overview, which includes my Rclone skill and many others. Feel free to sign up for a free trial if you want to view my training. snar.co/cbt-everythinglinux