What is ownCloud?
In simple words, it’s a Dropbox which is setup and managed by you.
You can install ownCloud on your own server and then install ownCloud client for your laptop/mobile and seamlessly sync files just like Dropbox. Dropbox is the only decent free storage service which provides a client for linux. So if you are a linux user then this is really a blessing for you. OwnCloud also has clients for all platforms and it’s open source too. So you can modify it as per your need.
You can buy a raspberry pi, deploy ownCloud on it and connect your external hard disk with it. That will become your own dropbox like service with a lot of storage. Yes making the ownCloud installed on raspberry pi publicly accessible might be a little tricky but I have done it and I’m going to blog about it soon. I have the same setup and it’s working really well for me.
Why Should I use it?
Well you might ask that we already have services like google drive and dropbox which give us storage and are free too, then why waste time and money on something like this? Well, I agree with you completely. OwnCloud is mostly for enterprise who want to provision cloud storage service for their employees. But this can be useful to you if you already have a server on digital ocean or anything other cloud offering. You can utilise the storage available. You can deploy it on your LAN for sharing large files or think of any use case which suites your needs. Nevertheless it’s an amazing software which might come handy sometime, you never know.
You can find more info about ownCloud here. If you have an account on digital ocean then I strongly recommend you to give it a shot. It’s an amazing software and it will make your life simpler.