Online Storage 2.0: Six Sites Reviewed

mikemuch writes "Services like box.net, openomy, and eSnips are more than just places to access your files from the web. Some include media organization tools, Windows shell integration, drag-and-drop uploading, tagging, and social content sharing. ExtremeTech has a review up of six online storage services with Web 2.0 twists."

I surprised they didn't include XDrive.

[IANAAC]

They give you 5 Gig free. It's owned by AOL, but there don't seem to be any realy limitations placed on the user.

Links people links...

[rovingeyes]

Now isn't this link much better? [extremetech.com]. Why is it so difficult to submit these links instead? Sigh...

Or you could get a hosting account...

[Paulrothrock]

I've got 224 GB of storage space and 2.6 TB of monthly bandwidth, along with an image gallery, blog, SSH and FTP access, and email with spam filtering for $9.99/month + $10/year for the domain name.

Re:Links people links...

[LMacG]

Since it's almost a certainty that the author of the piece submitted the article --cf. "mikemuch writes", "Six Free Online Storage Services - By Michael W. Muchmore" -- one might imagine the point was to gain page hits and ad impressions.

Re:I surprised they didn't include XDrive.

[uradu]

Agree. The only problem I have with XDrive is their totally retarded sign-up mechanism: they require you to register an AOL "screen name", and that system seems to be at least intermittently broken. I've tried to sign up a friend several times using both FF and IE and never received an actual screen name, but it did register his email address each time and did not let me use it again the next time, so I always had to use a different email address, and still no screen name to this day.

Absolutely.

[benevixit]

For those willing to forgo drag-and-drop interfaces, the shared hosting account is a much better storage deal for the buck. The better companies will provide in excess of 100GB for $5-8 per month with regular off-site backups. Oh, and you get web hosting too.

In contrast, the consumer market companies in the article generally charge the same amount for an order of magnitude less storage. Maybe there's less competition for consumer storage, or higher marketing costs? Regardless, the discrepancy looks like a market imbalance that can't continue for long.

Re:Links people links...

[Fifty Points]

Maybe because without an internal referral URL, your link just redirects to the same thing, hmmm?

Re:ssh rsync?

[VE3MTM]

How about http://www.rsync.net/ [rsync.net]?

I have no affiliation with them, and I've never used their service, but it sounds like what you asked for.

Re:Yippee - 6 more sites to add to the "banned" li

[Rich0]

Then create a cert using CACert, provide instructions for users to import their root cert, and get on the bandwagon of people shouting for Mozilla to finally add them to the default list.

Or publish your own root cert for users to import.

There are solutions out there...

Re:Amazon S3?

[StanS]

I've been using s3sync to upload/download stuff to Amazon's S3 service for months. It works great. I even use it on Windows (since it's a ruby program, it works anywhere).

There are many graphical managers as well, I use jetS3t [amazonaws.com], which is a java based gui client.

The huge added bonus (for me) is that with S3 it's trivial to make something public (with or without authentication), or even have it host a torrent.

Re:I surprised they didn't include XDrive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a developer at Xdrive, we develop the freaking service on MacBook Pro's, but we can't get an OS X client into the feature list. With Apple poised to make major gains against Microsoft re: Vista, I'm floored that we don't consider an OS X client a strategic feature.

Please, please, bitch and moan about it. Louder. Your voices count for more than mine.

Grrr... I was going to provide a link to the community forums website (from http://www.xdrive.com/support [xdrive.com]), but that's broken at the moment. Give it a day or so and then please try again [ipbhost.com]. Lots of us want an OS X client. It will only happen if Xdrive/AOL management can be convinced of the need.

(AC because attaching my name to this might be a CLM)