Is there a way to send large files, such as 3GB films or a folder full of PDFs from one person to another on the net?

You could post them on Dropbox, and then share.

I’ve used Dropbox for some large music files, but I’m not sure how large you can go without paying for an upgrade.

Dropbox is the obvious first choice. 3GB will not be an option right away unless you’re willing to pay for an upgrade, or annoy all your closest friends who don’t already have it installed.

There’s also Google Drive, which I don’t use – so I don’t know how they are for space.

Thank you very much you guys. I’m checking Dropbox out now.

Another thing: Will zipping files first enable me to send more gigs without going over the free use limit?

@Espiritus_Corvus Probably not. I don’t know if your experience is different from mine, but I find there’s very little difference in size between a zipped and an unzipped folder anymore.

The reverse might be a more attractive option, if you don’t want to upgrade: share smaller parts of the whole at a time, removing old content once it has been downloaded at the other end.

^^Thanks, @dappled_leaves. The sad fact is that I I’ve been on computers since the ‘80s and know nada of zip files, the software involved, or exactly how it all works. I have only heard that zipping is a way to compress a file.

I’m hesitant to open the “Try it free” button on Dropbox. If it is a time sensitive offer, I don’t want the clock to start ticking tonight. I need to notify the receivers first and discuss our menus of films we want to share.

The deal is this. Friends and I have been passing around a couple of flashdrives via snail mail for a couple of years in order to share old and rare films. Tonight I figured by now that some kind of shareware technology may have been developed to make all this unnecessary. If Dropbox turns out to be what I think it is, I’d like to trade films with others beyond my little circle. There are people in this community here who have expressed an interest in old films. I think it would be cool if we were all able to access the films we drop. It sounds like a dead drop, which would be ideal. It would add to Fluther and further bond us, I think.

I use BigMailFile.com too. Sometimes people don’t have Dropbox.

One thing to watch with dropbox is that it syncs. Log out when you’ve sent/uploaded etc. Because it eats data. We’re not allowed to use it for data storage at work because of this issue. We couldn’t understand what was eating our data at home. It was dropbox. I still use it but I’m careful about logging out.

@Espiritus_Corvus There’s no time limit on the free Dropbox account, so don’t worry about clicking the button. It’s just that with the free account, you have little storage. They “reward” you with more storage for silly things like filling out a profile (mine is bogus) and inviting friends – IF the friends follow through and open accounts. So, if your friends don’t already have accounts, maybe that will be a way for you to increase your storage. Win/win, except that your friends have to find other people to invite. ;)

The free version of Dropbox is similar to free versions of other apps, in that it basic, with a limit to the amount of data you drop without paying for the upgrade. I’ve used it on and off for almost as long as I’ve been on Fluther, and haven’t had to pay yet.

@Earthbound_Misfit Oh yeah – I have a friend who uses Filemail, which is very similar. Maybe that’s an easier solution, @Espiritus_Corvus. I have no direct experience with this, other than receiving links to files.

Checking…

I feel Dropbox is overrated, largely because of the filesize limits. I forget the name of the one I used to use a lot, but I hear RapidShare has no size limits on it’s free services; they just delete the file(s) after 30 days if you don’t have a paid account.

A little creativity can allow using Github for that sort of thing. My buddy uses Github for backups and syncing his laptop and desktop.

Might want to give Mega a try. The free tier is 50GB of storage.

You should be able to use Google Drive. It allows you to share with a download link fir the person you are sending the large file to.

Mega… didn’t they have serious issues a while back?

Rapidshare went down March, 2015. BigMailFile has ShareFile with good reviews. I am sending a 850mb file to a friend now via Filemail, ETA 1hr 38 mins. I’m uploading a 1.5gb film to a MEGA account now at ca. 85kb/sec. but don’t know yet how this file can be shared yet. MEGA looks easy and faster and gives 50gb free storage… oops. Just read about it’s provenance with megaupload.com. Hmmm. There is some net paranoia that Dot.com has turned State’s evidence and that this is an FBI trap for pirates. Christ. Looking at Google Drive…

Thank you very much, everybody.

@Espiritus_Corvus Yeah, if these are pirated files, my own inclination would be not to share them across any of these platforms. You can bet that all their terms and agreements contracts stipulate that you can’t do that. But obviously, the risk is going to depend on whether they ever check to see what sorts of files are moving, and of course, how fast you can sail.

Yeah. The films we share are old and we don’t sell them, but the copyrights are still good, so technically it’s pirating. Shit. I guess it’s back to the flashdrive. I don’t need that kind of grief, even if it came to nothing.

Transfers cancelled.

Has a cat, has a boat, is a pirate… :-)

You could also consider Lima, which lets you set up a drive of your own, physically located in your own home and attached wirelessly to your own router, and then give the other user the sign-in capability. The beauty of that is that you have the capability to store terabytes worth of information / files, the drive is in your possession (at least, “in your home or office”) and you can disconnect it at any time, as well as maintain, backup, delete, edit and append to the files any time and for any reason.

I use Dropbox and Mediafire. Mediafire gives you more storage but sometimes you can encounter an annoying bug that stops your upload at 99%. And I think you should split your zip file into multiple one. You can then send one file at a time. It will save you storage.

Or look into BTSYNC. It is like a self hosted dropbox.

Select a folder on your computer to share and then it generates a key that you give to everyone else. Then it will keep all the folders on separate computers synced.

So all your buddies install BTSYNC and then you give them the key and then it will sync all them up. And since it is based on bittorent you can build sort of a swarm so everyone uploads to each other so it will speed things up. And you can also turn off your computer and it will just pick up the download where it was with no intervention. And since it is hosted on your computer the only limit of storage is how much space everyone has on their computer.

https://www.getsync.com/

I have been using it for years.