Sorry but I can’t think of another word for it right now. This is mostly just venting but also if anyone has a better way to do it I wouldn’t hate to hear it.

I’m trying to set up a home server for all of our family photos. We’re on our way to de-googling, and part of the impetus for the change is that our Google Drive is almost full.We have a few hundred gigs of photos between us. The problem with trying to download your data from Google is that it will only allow you to do so in a reasonable way through Google takeout. First you have to order it. Then you have to wait anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for Google to “prepare” the download. Then you have one week before the takeout “expires.” That’s one week to the minute from the time of the initial request.

I don’t have some kind of fancy California internet, I just have normal home internet and there is just no way to download a 50gig (or 2 gig) file in one go - there are always intrruptions that require restarting the download. But if you try to download the files too many times, Google will give you another error and you have to start over and request a new takeout. Google doesn’t let you download the entire archive either, you have to select each file part individually.

I can’t tell you how many weeks it’s been that I’ve tried to download all of the files before they expire, or google gives me another error.

I know it’s not ideal, but if you can afford it, you could rent a VPS in a cloud provider for a week or two, and do the download from Google Takeout on that, and then use sync or similar to copy the files to your own server.

@gedaliyah@lemmy.world
creator
link
fedilink
English
43M

I don’t know how to do any of that but I know it will help to know anyway. I’ll look into it. Thanks

Instead of having to do an Operating system setup with a cloud provider, maybe another cloud backup service would work. Something like Backblaze can receive your Google files. Then you can download from Backblaze at your leisure.

https://help.goodsync.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003419711-Backblaze-B2

Or use the filters by date to limit the amount of takeout data that’s created? Then repeat with different filters for the next chunk.

Eager Eagle
link
fedilink
English
33M

A 50GB download takes less than 12h on a 10Mbps internet. And I had a 10Mbps link 10 years ago in a third world country, so maybe check your options with your ISP. 50GB really should not be a problem nowadays.

@gedaliyah@lemmy.world
creator
link
fedilink
English
23M

It’s not the speed - it’s the interruptions. If I could guarantee an uninterrupted download for 12 hours, then I could do it over the course of 3-4 days. I’m looking into some of the download management tools that people here have suggested.

Eager Eagle
link
fedilink
English
13M

that might work; I don’t know if you live in a remote area, but I’d also consider a coffee shop, library, university, or hotel lobby with wifi. You might be able to download it within an hour.

@Symphonic@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
53M

I have fancy California Internet and the downloads are surprisingly slow and kept slowing down and turning off. It was such a pain to get my data out of takeout.

@irotsoma@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
33M

Use Drive or if it’s more than 15GB or whatever the max is these days. Pay for storage for one month for a couple of dollars on one of the supported platforms and download from there.

@roofuskit@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
43M

The word you’re looking for is “petty.”

Resol van Lemmy
link
fedilink
English
33M

It’s bad because they don’t want you to use it, but they made it exist so that they don’t get sued by the European Union.

@TCB13@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
33M

It’s called: vendor lock-in.

Create a post

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it’s not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don’t duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

  • 1 user online
  • 14 users / day
  • 49 users / week
  • 208 users / month
  • 839 users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 1.46K Posts
  • 8.39K Comments
  • Modlog