HOST YOUR OWN CLOUD
@PCPRO
Are you continually running out of space on Dropbox, Google Drive or whatever your chosen cloud platform may be? If so, it’s time to take matters into your own hands. Storing files on your own hardware lets you consolidate and synchronise your data without having to worry about storage limitations – and your privacy can also be better protected. Here’s how to set up either a Raspberry Pi or a spare Windows PC as a personal cloud server, using the free ownCloud platform.
STEP 1 Getting started with the Raspberry Pi
You can install and run ownCloud on a regular Raspberry Pi running Raspbian, but getting it working can be a little complicated, as you also need to install and configure web and database services.
To simplify things, therefore, we’ll ditch Raspbian and use the ultra-light DietPi OS distribution instead. This is based on Debian, like the official operating system, but it’s designed to take up as little space as possible (a minimal installation tips the scales at just 400MB) and to streamline the process of installing core apps and services. Thus, when we install ownCloud on DietPi, the web server and database are also automatically installed and set up so that ownCloud can work from the word go.
As DietPi is still a full, multitasking OS, you’re free
