Andy Smith <a...@strugglers.net> writes: > If all you require is access to your data when you are out and about, > and you do currently have always-on Internet at home, you could build > a cheap server, attach your existing USB storage to it, and serve it > with owncloud or something.
This sometimes goes by the (IMO stupidly misleading) name of “personal cloud”, but “cloud” is a useless word for all of this. It's simply an always-on server for file storage and maybe some other services. When the primary purpose is network-attached file storage, as the original poster is requesting, the term to search for is Network Attached Storage (NAS). In other words, it's what used to be quite normal for many people, before the internet was centralised :-) and is a great step to re-decentralising the net [0]. One downside is, as pointed out earlier, you must (yourself, or convince someone else to) take on the job of system administrator for your network. There is a good free-software-respecting hardware solution for building a bare-bones server for running at a home or small office, the GnuBee <URL:https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/>. It runs a full-blown GNU+Linux operating system under your full control, so you could set it up to also run services along the line of nextCloud or the like. [0] <URL:https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/06/28/how-to-fix-what-has-gone-wrong-with-the-internet> <URL:https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tim-berners-lee-reclaim-the-web> -- \ “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for | `\ what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.” | _o__) —Niels Bohr | Ben Finney
