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Proton Drive ​

How to back up your data to Proton Drive using SimpleBackups.

Proton Drive is an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service from Proton. While SimpleBackups does not offer a native Proton Drive integration, you can connect it by mounting Proton Drive as a local volume on your server and using SimpleBackups' Local storage option. This approach works on any Linux server and gives you full control over the mount configuration.

How it works ​

You install rclone on your server, configure it with your Proton account, and run a persistent mount using systemd. SimpleBackups then treats the mounted directory as local storage and writes backups directly into it — which get synced to Proton Drive automatically.

Prerequisites ​

  • A Linux server connected to SimpleBackups
  • A Proton account with Proton Drive access
  • sudo access on the server

Step 1: Install dependencies ​

Install FUSE3 and unzip, which rclone requires to mount remote filesystems:

bash
sudo apt install -y fuse3 unzip

Install rclone (version 1.64.0 or newer is required for Proton Drive support):

bash
curl -O https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
unzip rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
cd rclone-*-linux-amd64
sudo cp rclone /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/rclone

Verify the installation:

bash
rclone version

Step 2: Configure rclone with Proton Drive ​

Run the rclone configuration wizard:

bash
rclone config

When prompted:

  1. Select n to create a new remote
  2. Name it proton
  3. Choose protondrive as the storage type
  4. Follow the browser-based authentication flow to authorize rclone with your Proton account
  5. Save and exit the configuration

Step 3: Create the mount directory ​

Create a directory where Proton Drive will be mounted:

bash
mkdir -p ~/ProtonDrive
mkdir -p ~/.cache/rclone

Step 4: Set up a persistent systemd service ​

Enable non-root FUSE mounts by updating /etc/fuse.conf:

bash
sudo sed -i 's/#user_allow_other/user_allow_other/' /etc/fuse.conf

Create the systemd user service file:

bash
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/rclone-proton.mount.service << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Proton Drive rclone mount
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/rclone mount proton: %h/ProtonDrive \
  --vfs-cache-mode writes \
  --vfs-cache-max-size 500M \
  --dir-cache-time 5m \
  --poll-interval 1m \
  --umask 002 \
  --allow-other \
  --log-file %h/.cache/rclone/rclone.log
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -u %h/ProtonDrive
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF

Enable and start the service:

bash
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now rclone-proton.mount.service

Verify the mount is working:

bash
ls ~/ProtonDrive
systemctl --user status rclone-proton.mount.service

Step 5: Connect to SimpleBackups ​

Once Proton Drive is mounted, select it as the storage destination when creating a backup:

  1. Create or edit a backup in SimpleBackups
  2. In the Storage step, select Local storage as the storage type
  3. Enter the absolute path to your mount directory — for example /home/youruser/ProtonDrive/simplebackups
  4. Save the backup

SimpleBackups will write backups to that directory, and rclone will sync them to your Proton Drive automatically.

Maintenance ​

Check service status:

bash
systemctl --user status rclone-proton.mount.service

Restart after a connectivity issue:

bash
systemctl --user restart rclone-proton.mount.service

View mount logs:

bash
tail -f ~/.cache/rclone/rclone.log

Removing the integration ​

To uninstall the mount service:

bash
systemctl --user disable --now rclone-proton.mount.service
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/rclone-proton.mount.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
NAS or local volumeLearn more about using local and mounted storage with SimpleBackups.