# 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
```

**Info:**
If your user was recently added to the `fuse` group, you may need to log out and back in (or reboot) before the mount works correctly.

## 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.

**Tip:**
You can also use the **SFTP** storage type instead of Local storage. Use the same mount directory path as the remote path. See [SFTP Storage](https://simplebackups.com/docs/storage-providers/sftp-storage) for setup instructions.

**Tip:**
Create a dedicated subdirectory inside your Proton Drive mount (e.g., `~/ProtonDrive/simplebackups`) to keep your backups organized and separate from other files.

## 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
```

**Service persistence across reboots:**
Systemd user services only start at login by default. To ensure the mount starts on boot without logging in, enable systemd user lingering on your server:

```bash
sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER
```

## 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 volume](https://simplebackups.com/docs/storage-providers/nas-or-local-volume): Learn more about using local and mounted storage with SimpleBackups.