In this post, you will learn why I cancelled my pCloud account, and how to cancel pCloud. Long story short, I had two accounts, and I wanted to close them one by one. reasons for closing include: -Convenience, and -In spite of a 10 GB account, usable space was only 6.5 GB in one of the accounts. -There is a problem of plenty for storage accounts, and I thought of closing the free ones Read on to learn how I did it.
The key thing to remember: back up your data before closing the accounts!
My post today brings a different flavor compared to the posts I have written in recent times. That is, I am publishing neither a review, nor a benchmark. This post also marks the beginning of sorts for a new category I am adding to my blog: Cloud Storage.
Decision to cancel my pCloud Account
pCloud, in case you are not aware, is a Switzerland based cloud storage and file transfer service. I have written about the latter in my post about alternatives to WeTransfer.
Backup your data before cancelling pCloud account!
I had two accounts with pCloud, both in the free tier. I have been thinking of upgrading to a paid plan. But my lifetime plan for Koofr, and the 4 TB plan with Thunderdrive are more than adequate for my needs for now. The plan I wanted to cancel is a 10 GB one, but do to some errors, I could only use 6.5 GB. My actual storage was about 7.5 GB, so I kept getting “storage exceeded” error. Therefore, I decided to move my data out from pCloud and close this account.In a cfew weeks, I will close the other account as well
How to back up your pCloud data
The first and most important step before deciding to cancel a service is to back up your data. Therefore, in this part of my post, I will talk about how to back up your pCloud data. I thought of the following options to back up my 7.5 odd GB of data.
There are multiple ways of achieving this.
-Download the files as a single, large ‘zip’ folder
-Use Webdav to connect the pCloud folder to my laptop
-Install the pCloud app on my Mac (or Linux) computer and “sync” the folders
b. Download to a VPS or a cloud drive:
I decided to go for Option b. In the past, I had used a service like MultCloud to transfer the files. This time round, I decided to use two services:
-Rethink Software (for connecting via web browser)
-using RClone, a terminal based application
Rethink Made me Rethink!
Rethink, (formerly known as Publist) provides a convenient way to connect cloud drives, VPS and other services graphically via Web browser.
Setting up the connection was very easy, but the speed of transfer was slow. I ran into an error mid way, which made me repeat the process. The end result: duplication of many files and folders.
Enter RClone
Open source tool, Rclone, is a terminal based file transfer, syncing and backing up tool. I had used it several years ago, quite unsuccessfully. This time, I decided to read the documentation in detail. In addition, I watched the How Tos on YouTube, and decided to dive into using RClone. I backed up the content from pCloud to two different Virtual Private Servers.
Next Steps: Deleting The Account
The files were backed up on the two different servers. I went to my account menu in pCloud and clicked the “delete” button. I received an email asking me to confirm the deletion. As one last step, I was asked to enter my password. Finally, the account was deleted.
Notes and references:
a. How to configure pCloud using RClone:
b. Connecting pCloud and Rethink:
This post was updated on 2020-09-18
