17 Online File Storage Services Tested 186
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.
And thankfully... (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2, Insightful)
I reckon that's probably because it was written by PC World. Whaddya think, hmm?
Re:And thankfully... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and if you'll excuse me:
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Another alternative is to make yourself a Sourceforge/Savannah/whatever project and use their CVS service. You do keep your important stuff in version control, right?
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
I don't get the joke.
maybe it's just the lager.
Re:And thankfully... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Only thing it chokes on is files >2GB; but again, it was written for Fat32.
Every other Win FTP client I've tried chokes on large files as well. If I have a 22GB file that I need transferred, it either gets copied to the USB 2.0 external drive, or " netcat " gets the job done.
http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~jdebis/leechftp/ [fh-heilbronn.de]
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Re:And thankfully... (Score:2)
Honestly, there's no excuse for that these days - where are all the Bigfile, multi-threaded, free FTP clients for Windows - especially now that most users are using NTFS instead of Fat32?
good idea, still too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is one service you don't want to go cheap on (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, you can't have it both ways. A cheap backup service is much more likely to go out of business.
Backup is one service where you don't want to go to the lowest bidder.
If your data is important enough, you'll pay a professional service a professional rate, to back it up. A backup service should be much more than some guy selling off pieces of his own USB drive attached to the Internet.
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:3, Insightful)
and
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:2)
Depends how much your data is worth to you. If your house burns down, you may have lost all your physical drives in one go. That's why I like the idea of remote storage.
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:2)
Get a good Firewire/USB drive enclosure like the BYTECC ME-835U2F, stick whatever sized drive in it that you want. Alternately, get a 5.25" enclosure like the ME-340U2F and stick DRW115 drive caddies in (with a small bit of drilling).
Encrypt the drive with TrueCry
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.
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:2)
This is very interesting to me; I was looking at virtual hosting a short while ago but I could not find anyone that offered enough space to backup my data (I'd be looking for 120gig minimum).
Are there any English language equivalents that offer vast storage and
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:2)
I am French and hence understand fully yhe offer. 100MB is the bandwith, Traffic is unlimited. So you can kick it with 1 TB a month if you wish, they won't bark
Re:good idea, still too expensive (Score:2)
I have 20MB/s download and 1MB/s of upload. Granted the upload is somewhat less than a T1, but the download is just 10x faster. So all in all, I wouldn't trade my DSL connection with a T1, but for a pouch of gold.
Go GoDaddy! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Go GoDaddy! (Score:3, Funny)
It's cheaper if... (Score:2)
what about eSnips? (Score:2, Informative)
Sharepoint (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sharepoint (Score:2)
Re:Sharepoint (Score:2)
That said... We had a strong need in my office for a file-sharing system recently... Our requirements were 1- Easy to Use. 2- Branded with our logo/colors 3- multiple levels of access and file restrictions, so that users only saw the files we wa
Oh I forgot ifolders. (Score:3, Informative)
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 (
Re:Data Dumps (Score:2)
MySpace (Score:3, Funny)
I want my 10MB back.
Re:MySpace (Score:2)
Apparently the domain got recycled... [Re:MySpace] (Score:3, Informative)
The old Myspace.com closed it's doors back in 2001 [nytimes.com]. The new MySpace beast is unrelated to that old site. (Google link doesn't require soul-sucking registration... [google.com])
Perils (Score:4, Insightful)
real backup services allow private key encryption (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Perils (Score:2)
RAR archives can be encrypted, and I haven't heard of any cracks. Install WinRAR and it's a right-click away.
Re:Perils (Score:2)
A RAR file with a password IS encrypted. But that is secure, as far as I know (unlike most ZIPs). If for instance I look for RAR password crackers, I find only things like Elcomsoft [elcomsoft.com] who say "At the moment, there is no known method to extract the password from the compressed file; so the only available methods are 'brute force' and dictionary-based attack
Encryption tools (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Perils (Score:2)
Encryption software recommendations (Score:2)
You should encrypt it before sending it out to the service provider. This way you don't care, what method THEY are using. In fact, you'd rather they used none at all.
Personally, I am happy with CCrypt [mathstat.dal.ca], which is a secure replacement for the simple-minded Unix crypt(1) utility. The FreeBSD [freebsd.org] port [freshports.org] makes installing a breeze, as usual.
sounds like a security risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sounds like a security risk (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:sounds like a security risk (Score:2)
It's all a question of managing one's risks:
- A tight contract with a company that handles off site backup storage/archiving including penalty clausules for data loss or data leaks is a muc
encryption is still legal (Score:2)
But that's beside the point. The vast majority of people don't have interesting data. The family photo album or the mp3 collection just doesn't matter to anyone but me most of the time. One person's treasure is another person's trash.
Or hell, let us be honest - most people browser the internet using IE. Most people are NOT worried about security. If you are worried a
Re:encryption is still legal (Score:3, Insightful)
An MP3 collection leads to "buy this type of music!" ads. Photo albums (with tags) lead to "Go to this place!" ads. There's a lot that can be found out from your files, even if you think they're uninteresting.
Re:sounds like a security risk (Score:2)
But they have a great deal of value to me. They could be on a public server and it wouldn't matter. They just need to be available to me.
Security isn't always about keeping other people out.
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.
Re:GDrive (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing the obvious... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Missing the obvious... (Score:2)
On the other hand, why not get a cheap hosting plan that offers shell access. Park your, properly encrypted, of course, files there. If you use Linux/*BSD most desktop file managers allow seamless SFTP access to remote places. If you are a Windows user "SftpDrive" is your friend, gives your $HOME a letter under windows. Pretty much guara
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)
filefactory.com (Score:2)
Re:All of these do waaaay more than I ever want (Score:2)
Their xfer link also auto-expires after a week or so; free cleanup is included.
In the Clear (Score:2)
Re:In the Clear (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In the Clear (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:In the Clear (Score:2)
Amazon.com's S3 and JungleDisk (Score:4, Informative)
bring the cost down (Score:2)
Looking through the features, I think I see why they all cost so much -- they all of
Re:bring the cost down (Score:2)
http://www.fsnhosting.com/backups.php [fsnhosting.com]
I sell exactly what you're looking for =)
Re:bring the cost down (Score:2)
I don't see anything like what I was talking about. Your offsite backup is a live RAID5 array that costs $150/month (which, I'll grant you is a MUCH less expensive option than the ones in the article, and I'll certainly direct some customers towards a service like yours).
I'm talking about something more along the lines of selling a high capacity tape archive for 200-300% of the media cost, and then the tape goes into your vault until the customer requests a restore (
Where have the nerds gone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where have the nerds gone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am surprised by how high the prices on these services are. I just checked my Dreamhost account, and I now have over 25 gigs available for $10/month. I had no idea it had grown so much since I last checked.
Re:Where have the nerds gone? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Where have the nerds gone? (Score:2)
Data safety guarantees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Data safety guarantees (Score:2)
There are varying degrees of important. Really important data should be redundantly protected at dozens of remote call centers on multiple continents linked by non-internet direct lines, all under your control. Slightly less important data can be protected under the wing of a large outsourcing corporation like IBM, with the guarantees and penalties you mention spelled out in detail, at the cost of
Re:Data safety guarantees (Score:2)
My price per gigabyte has just gone down. I am paying $109 CDN ($125.35 CDN after tax) for a 250GB drive (that's "decimal" based GB). Which is 50 cents (CDN) per GB. Translating to US, its 45 cents US per GB.
The drives have a manufacturing guarantee of 3 years, so my GB price per year is 15 cents. (Of course I don't rely on the drive to last - but I will get it repla
Re:Data safety guarantees (Score:2)
Like any consumer grade service it comes with nothing more than a gentleman's guarantee.
Compare the warranty on your car.
Re:Data safety guarantees (Score:2)
FolderShare (Score:2)
Strongspace (Score:2, Informative)
A simpler solution (Score:2)
Join up with a friend and each get a hard drive with a caddy (a slide in tray which holds the drive, making for easy removal). Make them the same type of HD (and caddy, of course). Now you can each backup up your critical data onto the caddy drive and swap them. Next day/week/month backup onto the drive and swap again etc, etc. If you don't meet at work or very regularly, look at it as a good excuse to get together for a beer!
Connected TLM (Score:2)
It's fantastic.
No mention of rsync.net ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No mention of rsync.net ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm quite happy with raidarray.net [slashdot.org], which I've been using for the past year. Their offer is very affordable (100$ for 25 Gb a year long) and it has all the Unix bells and whistles you need (rsync, ftp, etc). They also have a very helpful support team who helped me out with a sticky rsync-problem.
Oh and for backup software I use Rdiff-backup [nongnu.org], which is able to make reverse incremental backups.
Re:No mention of rsync.net ? (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunetly when you go to sign up you get: "Ordering is closed temporarily. It will return in 1 weeks time." To bad, I for one will check back in a week to see if it's up. It almost seems to good to be true, I tried doing a couple of google searches on it and came up with essentially nothing. Anybody
Re:No mention of rsync.net ? (Score:2)
Re:rsync.net - alone with duplicity and rdiff-back (Score:2, Informative)
But rsync.net is going to become known as _the_ choice for unix/sysadmin folks (and the generally clueful).
They are the only ones that offer advanced backup and encryption services such as duplicity and rdiff-backup support, in addition to their basic protocols such as rsync, Unison, WebDAV.
Also, and this is huge, they are the ONLY offsite backup provider with geographical redundan
Oh my god (Score:2)
Why bother RTFA? (Score:2)
Early AOL as backup (Score:2)
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
Is there any good (free?) back-up software... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Nice, what about Linux compatibility? (Score:2)
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.
Re:If you're going to pay for something.. (Score:2)
iBackup has a fire? Backup to one of the other services while you're still live.
Re:If you're going to pay for something.. (Score:2)
Re:If you're going to pay for something.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ftp (Score:3, Insightful)
Pleas, by all means, use scp instead of ftp. The scp protocol is covered (encrypted). It is part of the ssh suite of applications. Every Linux system comes with it. There is a suite of tools for Windows called Putty. They also include scp.
Truly
Cleara