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17 Online File Storage Services Tested
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jun 22, 2006 10:17 PM
from the kicking-the-tires dept.
from the kicking-the-tires dept.
prostoalex writes "PC World reviewed 17 online file storage services. According to the summary: 'Of the 17 services we tried, our favorite backup service is IBackup, while the GoDaddy Online File Folder is our pick of the storage sites. And for sharing files, we like the free 4shared.com service.'" They're also thoughtful enough to include a warning about the pitfalls of saving your data online.
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17 Online File Storage Services Tested
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And thankfully... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://das.doit.wisc.edu/)
I'd also note that Apple's
Re:And thankfully... (Score:5, Informative)
I'd register a dotmac account in a second, if they didn't max out at two gigs of storage.
Re:And thankfully... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.jsyncmanager.org/ | Last Journal: Friday September 21, @03:50AM)
Actually, I just checked, and .Mac currently maxes out at 4GB of storage.
It's possible this still isn't enough for your needs, but in case it is, I thought a correction was in order.
Yaz.
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and if you'll excuse me:
Re:And thankfully... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
good idea, still too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
I've been waiting a long time for the arrival of internet storage -- I'd much rather let someone else manage the integrity and provide peace of mind.
Concerns about services going out of business, security, their own data integrity aside for the moment (but NOT to be ignored), these listed and reviewed services still far exceed prices I'm (and I'm guessing many others) willing to pay. I easily have 100+GB I would like guaranteed safe and ongoing synced and always backed up.
For now, I continue to maintain multiple hard drives on multiple machines with scripts that maintain backups, not easy, but effective and way more cost effective. And I expect soon NAS will come down in price enough to easily compete with any internet service -- of course internet services should come down in price too.
Sigh... always just waiting for that tipping point, that threshold, but at the same time seeing my requirements always slightly ahead of that threshold... pictures get bigger, videos get easier, and my mp3 collections (ripped from my own CDs) is a given constant.
Also for large internet storage, the big-pipe problem remains. I want an online storage from which I have reasonably unencumbered upload and download access. It would also be nice to see full T1 speeds at least (something not accessible to normal DSL or even cable subscribers). Don't know if and when that gets solved, and if solved how much additional expense is incurred. Sigh again.
Re:This is one service you don't want to go cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
An expensive backup service might be expensive because it's buying shiny crap at exorbitant rates. Which makes it even more likely to fail than the cheap one. The price tells you nothing about either what equipment they're using, the failure rates of said equipment, their redundancy level, or their solvency.
"Backup is one service where you don't want to go to the lowest bidder."
Yep, that's one of those typical backup salesman lines to watch out for.
Backup is, in the end, about this: redundancy, redundancy and redundancy.
For backup purposes, you'd be better off buying cheap pieces of USB drives off two different guys in their basement than a single expensive service.
You _do_ want to go for the lowest bidder. Several of them, in fact. Redundant array of inexpensive backup solutions, as it were.
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Each needs:
- storage space
- high speed internet
- always-on connectivity
- high-level security (by which I mean encrypt your own data as much as you need to)
Offer a swap. 100 GB each. You now have secure-enough (assuming good encryption), free (cost of your connection, already paid for), always-on (assuming each is geeky enough to leave computer on 24/7) backup and data storage.
Of course, it all depends who you link up with. But you can get a few and have some multiple redundancy.
I admit it has faults - but there are a few people here with large pipes, storage space, technical know-how and inclination to make it work. It has the added advantage of encouraging good encryption and security practices (i.e. if you don't follow them, your data is wide open).
Don't like it? Pay for one of these data centres. Or stick it on P2P.
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
They Offer a dedicated server with 160GB of HD, your OS of choice, 100MB bandwith and unlimited data.
You can SSH, FTP, VNC, whatever you want. How does that sound?
Price is 30/month.
Go GoDaddy! (Score:5, Funny)
what about eSnips? (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.justshawnf.com/)
Sharepoint (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.matthewkendall.com/)
Data Dumps (Score:5, Interesting)
And relatedly when gigabit connections become common sometime in the future you could keep your mp3's or divx movies in a dump and not notice any latency accessing them when the net isn't down (
MySpace (Score:3, Funny)
I want my 10MB back.
Perils (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://haltingpoint.blogspot.com/)
Encryption tools (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 14 2002, @09:54AM)
A more user-friendly approach would be to use an encrypting file system, such as TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org], which presents a single file as a drive on your machine, and backup the encrypted file regularly.
sounds like a security risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sounds like a security risk (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:sounds like a security risk (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't really say that I care what happens to my heavily encrypted data while it's on some third party network. If they can't give it back to me in identical form, they don't get paid any more, and they aren't the only place where I store it.
Not seeing your point.
GDrive (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a lot of people that use their webmail accounts in this manner (yahoo, hotmail, etc) where if they think they need to be access a file somewhere else, they'll just e-mail it to themselves in an attachment. In all honesty though, the adoption rate for something like this for home personal users isn't going to ramp up until the average upload speeds of a home connection increases. Especially for large files, too many Joe Computer users are going to think their computer froze just because it's taking so long to upload their files.
Missing the obvious... (Score:4, Informative)
Streamload has been my option for 4 years now. (Score:5, Informative)
- Basic Account - $4.95/month or $44.95/year - Unlimited Storage
Download Up to 2 GB/mo.
- Standard Account $9.95/month or $99.95/year - Unlimited Storage
Download Up to 25 GB/mo.
and it goes all the way up too:
Premium Account $39.95/month or $399.95/year - Unlimited Storage
Download Up to 100 GB/mo.
Or even terrabytes for businesses (a state university in America, I believe, Uses a fair percentage of streamload)
http://streamload.com/ [streamload.com]
Stremaload also allows you to host files for people that do not have Streamload accounts. The downloads are cheap and the uploads are quick. (By the way. My streamload account has more then 40 terrabytes of things that i can download.)
All of these do waaaay more than I ever want (Score:2, Informative)
In the Clear (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31 2005, @01:48PM)
Every distributed or remote data service must include automatic default scrambling features on the client. Probably in open source, to be sure they're really scrambling it, and not just spinning it around with some untested scrambling function. That's the starting point. After that, those minimally secure services can compete on other features.
Re:In the Clear (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31 2005, @01:48PM)
Using remote storage with open-source local scrambling clients that many cryptologists have studied automates that process for the masses.
The security isn't a sticky problem. Publishing even minimally responsible journalism seems to be the sticky part.
ftp (Score:1, Insightful)
Amazon.com's S3 and JungleDisk (Score:4, Informative)
bring the cost down (Score:2)
(http://www.artboy.org/)
Looking through the features, I think I see why they all cost so much -- they all offer "live" storage, where you can send links to friends and view files over the internet at any time. That's certainly a great feature, but do people REALLY need every file they've ever backed up to be available at a moment's notice? Of course not.
All these services are selling file system space, but nobody seems to be selling actual BACKUP services. Where is the service that lets me upload my 500 GB of data, and then they back it up onto a 400GB Ultrium tape for $100? Who cares if it takes 24-48 hours for my tape to get loaded and cached for restoring? I can't download 500GB overnight anyways, and I've obviously had a catastrophic failure of some sort on my end if I need to restore that data, it will take me at least a day just to get new hardware in place and set up to receive. A 24 hour wait is NOTHING in such a situation, and presumably your day-to-day critical stuff is either replicated locally or can be stored in a more expensive live online file system.
Ever since QIC/Travan capacities were left wanting over a decade ago, there hasn't been a single affordable backup solution available to the home/small office community. Any decent tape system these days costs upwards of $10k (and easily $250k) and requires more than trivial expertise to set up and run properly. It's a perfect opportunity for a qualified online operator to distribute the huge capital investment over lots of small customers who quite literally have no affordable alternative.
Where have the nerds gone? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.everylastpenny.com/)
Re:Where have the nerds gone? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
Then someone broke into her apartment and stole both her computer and the USB drive sitting next to it.
I often think of that, when I think of the backup hard drive I keep in my computer case.
Try stashbox.org (Score:1)
raidarray.net (Score:1, Informative)
(http://www.prismstudios.net/)
A. ftp backup
B. Driveletter mounting in Windows
C. Normal SMB mounting
D. NFS Mounting
I signed up for their middle plan, $15/mo, 50gig storage. Their higher plan is $25/mo for 100gig, or $10/mo for 25gig.
They're fast, seem to be stable. I was forced into using an offsite backup when the company I was working with was forced to downsize, and my dedicated server with them was going to be pulled. I was able to completely back my user data up within under an hour (30gig of data or so).
And yes, I did apply to be an affiliate, but it'd be tacky for me to try to get money from fellow
Data safety guarantees (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.animats.com)
Well, let's see what they commit to contractually:
So, even though some of these outfits make advertising claims like "IT NEVER FORGETS ElephantDrive uses military-grade encryption and large scale disaster recovery techniques so your data is stored safely for as long as you keep your account.", they don't stand behind those claims. It would thus be inappropriate to trust any of them with important data.
FolderShare (Score:2)
Strongspace (Score:2, Informative)
(Last Journal: Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:54AM)
A simpler solution (Score:2)
Join up with a friend and each get a hard drive with a caddy (a slide in tray which holds the drive, making for easy removal). Make them the same type of HD (and caddy, of course). Now you can each backup up your critical data onto the caddy drive and swap them. Next day/week/month backup onto the drive and swap again etc, etc. If you don't meet at work or very regularly, look at it as a good excuse to get together for a beer! ("But, darling I *have* to meet up with Joe. It's the offsite backups.")
Of course, you have to encrypt your data - not that you don't trust your friend (ahem!) but he might be burgled.
The beauty is that you can each back up any way you want and HD can store a *lot* - you can even use multiple disks.
I've done this with a 120GB disk and it works quite well. Now all I have to do is figure out the logistics of many participants and we can all have a weekly piss-up
Connected TLM (Score:2)
It's fantastic.
No mention of rsync.net ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why bother RTFA? (Score:2)
Early AOL as backup (Score:2)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
I would get myself one of the ubiquitous AOL trial diskettes. (I'm dating myself referring to diskettes, but it's OK, I'm a cheap date.) I'd sign up for the freebie, and use the five screen names they'd give you to email myself zip files of everything important. I think the mailbox limit was two megs or five megs or something per screenname, but that was okay since I was mostly backing up zipped text files, some JPEGs, and a few smaller apps off what wa usually a 20-50 meg hard drive.
I'd then do my clean install of Windows, reinstall AOL, get my mail, and cancel the accounts.
If I needed more space, there was always Compuserve, Prodigy, and GEnie as well. This never stopped working, and I did it at least once a year for ages. Later, when these services offered a few megs of FTP/Web space, that added even more room to exploit.
I imagine this would still work today if you were desperate, but thanks to the services in TFA and rewritable CDs/DVDs it's not really an issue anymore.
Is there any good (free?) back-up software... (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Free Alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
The one I use is RoamDrive [roamdrive.com]. It's free, it no longer has ads (it used to have a banner at the bottom), and it works with Gmail or Hotmail.
They've been promising a pro version that lets you link an unlimited number of gmail and hotmail accounts for a virtually unlimited amount of free storage, but it's been over a year and nothing has been released yet.
Still, the free version works really well. No limitations on file names or types, it automatically compresses files when necessary, and the only limitation for how much you can store is how much free space you have on the e-mail account in question.
XDrive Business Ethics (Score:2)
Most of the fee-based services I evaluated cancel automatically at the end of the trial period, but XDrive rolls over to the pay plan without bothering to ask for your permission first.
Not only that, but XDrive ignored my emails requesting that my account be cancelled. There are better places to do business with.
Carbonite (Score:3, Interesting)
Pros
Cons
Carbonite does a slow-trickle upload of my chosen files and directories when the computer isn't in use. I've uploaded over 50GB in about 4 weeks. I still keep local backups of everything, but it's great to have an offsite option for so cheap.
rsync.net warrant canary and privacy policy... (Score:1)
This may not be that useful in a business or technical sense, but it's nice to see someone taking a stand on these issues, and thinking through their role as a service provider in relation to the rights of their customers. Just read their philosophy statements and you'll understand what I mean.
I have chosen rsync.net because they are clueful both socially and technically. I defy anyone to find me another provider that will allow me to run a duplicity encrypted backup to multiple geographically redundant sites across the country.
Nice, what about Linux compatibility? (Score:2)
What about Jungle Disk? (Score:2)
(http://www.3e.org/)
The data is stored on Amazon S3 for $0.15 / GB, and you pay directly to Amazon, not to the creator of Jungle Disk.
The program itself is free (as in beer) and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux
There's GPL code that lets other people develop alternative compatible front-ends (i.e., the storage format is free-as-in-speech - no vendor lockin!)
The program makes use of heavy caching so that writing to the remote store feels as fast as to a local disk - operations are queued.
Filecloud (Score:1)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 28 2001, @10:00AM)
This is all very well (Score:1)
Re:If you're going to pay for something.. (Score:5, Informative)
We use iBackup. Nightly pgp-encrypted backups, and we sleep soundly knowing that if the bottom-most server on the rack catches fire and slags everything above it, that we can get new gear running, pull the data back down, decrypt it (after manually typing the key in from the printout stored in one of two offsite vaults, if necessary) and be live again in days.