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https://www.jungledisk.com/

I suppose it all depends on ones level of paranoia and which risks you fear most. Having all the data securely encrypted but in private homes means a couple of natural disasters and the data is gone.

One can layer encryption on top of theirs (as folks propose above with Dropbox) for an extra level of complexity.

To get a ruling on whether you may do what you want. Otherwise, as others have noted, you may be very deep waters (not only will you be in violation, but anyone in the organization using the service will be, and you will have induced them to do it. Think serious civil as well as criminal consequences).

From a technology angle, it may be "possible" if the folks in charge sign off.

"All" you need to do is encrypt the data before it goes offsite, encrypt it well enough that the data is protected commensurate with its value, etc.

For commercial users, https://jungledisk.com/ provides a very usable interface and GUI. Of course, if the client isn't trustworthy (and you have to take their word for it ;>) that goes out the window even if the algorithms are secure themselves ;>

I use it for some SOHO confidential data; it wouldn't be the end of the world if the data were disclosed, but we have committed to make good faith effort(s) to keep it secure, so we do (rather than moving files to subs via email, etc.). Not all subcontractors could handle sftp and friends.

Also Jungle Disk and Wuala. The list goes on...

SkyDrive is actually WebDAV, it's just not really advertized as such. But you can see it when you enable SkyDrive integration in MS Office and look at the file paths in file open/save dialogs.

Anyway, if you want a cloud disk service with open, documented protocol and the ability to mount it as a regular disk drive in pretty much any OS, that would be Jungle Disk (they even have a FUSE provider!).

JungleDisk does it right: they have such a client, but all it does (unless you do further setting up, like sync/backups) is making your remote storage show up as a network drive in Windows. Because of that, you can actually use any program to work directly with files on the disk, be it Explorer and Notepad, or PowerShell and Vim. They also have a simple Web version for when you're using a device that you don't own, or can't install the client on.

They also have clients for Linux and OS X, but I don't know what they do there. From what I've seen on their blogs, they provide a FUSE module on Linux. Anyway, the client protocol is public, and Linux client is FOSS, so anyone can expose it however they want.

Jungle Disk claims "The master key is based on a password YOU choose, known only to you and not stored with Jungle Disk." It doesn't say where the encrypted private key is stored, but at least they say they don't know the password used to encrypt the key.

Older, stabler, supports all those platforms, and it's cheaper.

Basically, it presents an Amazon S3 bucket as a network drive on your local PC.

http://www.jungledisk.com/

If you want to encrypt stuff that you store on S3, try JungleDisk: https://www.jungledisk.com/

Not necessarily. If you do the encryption of the data client-side, with the server receiving only an encrypted blob and never the keys, you can have privacy while still taking advantage of the cloud. For example see Jungle Disk. https://www.jungledisk.com/

File propagation among the people generally is still(even among the youth) at the level of "emailing it to myself", with all the version errors and minor fuckups that that occasions.

True, though I've noticed that more and more people use those "online disk" services like SkyDrive.

Personally, I just bought Jungle Disk subscription, which gives me an SMB share on top of Amazon S3 with pretty much no strings attached (you pay for monthly traffic, and you pay for storage used, and that's it). It also has a nifty client which can auto-sync local files with remote drive, which does two-way sync if you want it.

Synchronizing bookmarks? Pretty much doesn't happen.

Not until recently, but this seems to be changing rapidly as Chrome (which has bookmark sync built-in) steals market share away from Firefox - and it does also sync with Android browser.

Opera does the same between desktop browser and Mini, though arguably it's not so popular as to make a difference.

Cell contacts? unless you can swap the SIM, or have them do it for you at the store, people pretty much just retype them.

Smartphones these days typically integrate with some online service for that. My N1 does it for Contacts in GMail, so they're already shared between phone and desktop, and would be shared if I were to get a new Android phone.

I think the bigger problem is that every platform does it in its own way. So e.g. you can get bookmark and contacts sync between several PCs and phone if you go for Google all the way - Chrome & Android & GMail - but not if you use an Android phone, and, say, Opera on the desktop, and your own mail server.

You're in luck! Jungle Disk 3.0 was released this week, with Sync support (for Windows, Mac, and Linux).

http://blog.jungledisk.com/2009/11/17/jungle-disk-launches-an-all-new-product-lineup/

Since you're already a Jungle Disk customer, the upgrade is free. Jungle Disk 3.0 also has a new backup engine that does block-level de-duplication and compression, making it by far the most efficient method for doing online backup.

I'm not sure if you knew, but JungleDisk just released version 3 of their software which lets you sync any folder in your computer. This is better than DropBox in that the synced folders can be located anywhere. I'm not sure how this works with the backed up files though, but I would imagine that synced files are also part of the backup vault.

Of course, this still requires you to upload the files Amazon or RackSpace. Just want to make sure that you are aware that you don't have to use DropBox if you're already using Jungle Disk :)

Amazon's S3 has been around for some time now and will likely continue to hang around for a while. I'm using JungleDisk to provide encryption and a nice interface to it. The nice thing about using S3 is that you don't get an allotted amount of disk space or transfer, you just pay for what you use. A second backup of everything that I wouldn't want to lose (updated nightly) costs me about $5/mo. That's for ~40 GB storage and the incremental transfers.

It came in handy after a theft left me with no physical copy of some of my data. That month, after dumping about half of my stored data back to my home, my bill was a whopping $8.

Being that inexpensive, encrypted, and with an automated backup solution, I find that the WAF is really high. It was her computer that was stolen, too, so she's totally sold on the idea of backups now!

Check out Jungle Disk. Not expensive, great Mac client, and based on the Amazon S3. The premium/pro software version is really great as it has bit level file updating.

http://www.jungledisk.com/

Amazon S3 has been mentioned before and it's cheaper then all comparable offers. (For typical personal use (<< 100GB) S3 is pretty affordable.) With JungleDisk, a commercial (US$20) client, encrypted backups are trivial.

If you want to beat Amazon's pricing you probably need a good friend working at some large data center.

Jungle Disk is also very useful for S3. Allows you to mount drives in Windows, Linux or OSX. You have to pay, but only once per S3 account (so can use on multiple machines).

But as you say, it's too expensive for personal use once you hit the hundreds of Gigs. I'm sure it'll come down over time, but the reality is it's just expensive to store things online.

I really think the best solution is to use external HDDs (or even internal since he's not worried about access). Failure is a possibility, but they're pretty cheap, so just buy two and back it up twice.

Its not really that cheap, and not that simple to use for personal backups. Unless you are willing to write your own backup scripts, its going to be a headache.

Querying S3 for a list of stored files is *very* slow, and you only get 1k results per query. This means you have to index what files you put in S3 in a local db. This allows you to ask the db what files are there (and how to grab them).

If you only have a few files you can use the S3 browser extension for Firefox (or one of a many file system mounting, ftp simulating, etc tools). Just keep in mind the 1k file limit per query and box things in folders of no more than 1k items. Otherwise you will have a very slow browsing experience.

I have around 120 GB of family photos and purchased mp3s that I would like to store. To store 120 GB at .15 per gigabyte/month for 1 year would cost me: $216 (at $18 a month).

We use it where I work, with great success, but it would be much to much work for me for a personal backup system.

Considering the cost, I would go with a consumer targeted app (there are LOTS of them). A number of them charge a flat flee for "unlimited" storage. Beware of how you interface them. Some support windows only.

Try Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ . It makes S3 easy to use...

Jungledisk takes care of all the tedious backup stuff for you, and it is only a one time charge for the app.

But you're right, S3 isn't cheap. To store 500 GB of data would be about $75 a month, plus the $50 to put it on the server in the first place.

I use JungleDisk and the Amazon S3 service. This solution does everything you're asking for. It doesn't cost much, and you take on the S3 costs.

As far as redundancy goes, your data gets stored in multiple Amazon datacenters around the country, which provides redundancy and high availability. At the end of the day, it's a far superior solution to anything you can cook up at home.

Of course there is a small cost involved, but at $0.15/GB it's quite inexpensive for what you are getting.

rsync to Amazon S3 might be an option, if only for cross-platform capabilities. No versioning though

cough ... JungleDisk ... cough

Try JungleDisk http://www.jungledisk.com/ It uses Amanzon S3 Storage.

What about something like CrashPlan, JungleDisk, or even Mozy? I haven't used these, but am seriously considering adding one of them to my existing backup system. CrashPlan lets you decide who hosts your data (them, a friend with free disk space, whatever); JungleDisk relies on Amazon's S3 service, and Mozy is its own thing...

I understand this is slightly different from what you described in the request, but I'd suggest (and maybe others did already) to have a look at:

http://www.jungledisk.com/

It allows you to do all you mentioned, except it places your files in Amazon Storage. So you pay a (incredibly small) fee for the storage and everytime you move files around.

Have a look.

I use Amazons S3 service and a great multi-platform UI called JungleDisk. S3 costs a little bit, but you get security (encryption), backup, reliability for a cheap price. Check out: http://www.amazon.com/s3 and http://www.jungledisk.com/

Calendar: Find a tool (and there are some, I just can't think of the name now) that will allow you to bring Google Calendar data off of the server and into a local app.

For Calendars and Mail, here's what I do (Mac OS X 10.5):

• Spanning Sync for 2-way syncing of contacts and calendar to Address Book and iCal, respectively
• Mail.app for IMAP sync of email
• A (rather convoluted, I must say) series of backup jobs using JungleDisk, which mirrors to Amazon S3 using encryption; I guess Mozy or Carbonite (if they ever manage to come up with a Mac client) would be the same.
• Time Machine to keep hourly incrementals over WiFi both at home and at the office
• SuperDuper for disk mirroring to an external drive at home and, when I actually get past my laziness, to another one in the office

Time Machine backups are frequent and automatic, but you can't boot off of them if you don't have a Leopard disc at hand. When used in conjunction with location-aware "script runners" such as the free MarcoPolo, no action is required except the initial backup run. The system mounts the relevant network drive in each context, and TM does the rest.

SuperDuper backups are there to give me something to boot off of in case of catastrophe. They don't need to be up-to-the-minute: that's what the TM/online ones are for.

This same thing was asked roughly 9 months ago which got me thinking about my own solution. At first I was going to set up something like FreeNAS in a VM (easy backup, save states, etc.) but soon realized I needed more.

What I have now is a dedicated machine with four 500 gig HDDs in RAID 0+1 (I wanted 1+0 but I couldn't find the option and it's too late now).

In addition to a place on the network to store all my excessive files I can also use it for things like downloading media with Miro and sharing the media with TVersity, which allows me to stream media to my 360 etc.

In addition I added an RSYNC relationship (with deltacopy) between it and my primary PC for backing up and it is running JungleDisk (attached to Amazon's S3) for auto backup offsite.

It also is there if I want to rip and re-encode a DVD to DivX but still use my main machine for something else.

This is probably more than you were asking for but it is working pretty well for me.

If you wanted a low-power solution you could set all the above up with one of those mini-itx VIA boards (just buy a bulky enough PSU). The only devices I have are the five HDDs and a rarely used DVD-ROM. It doesn't actually take a lot of watts even with a normal board.

VIA mini-itx resource:
http://www.mini-itx.com/

DeltaCopy:
http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

Miro:
http://www.getmiro.com/

TVersity:
http://tversity.com/

JungleDisk:
http://www.jungledisk.com/

Amazon S3:
http://aws.amazon.com/s3

Amazon S3, accessed through Jungledisk. Don't bother to encrypt the files, its just another fail point. If they are that valuable to you, paying 15 cents per gigabyte per month may be comparable in cost to the cost of HDDs or DVD-Rs you'd need to buy to preserve them reliably.

Amazon's system is vast, cheap and reliable. Its what you need. I use Jungle Disk as an S3 client because it allows auto backup, resumable upload and is crossplatform

I am one of those people who uses Gmail as a backup betting it's more reliable than my hard drive.

Use an Amazon S3 backup tool with built-in encryption like Jungle Disk and you won't need to worry. The fact that you can even use 3rd party tools says a lot more about Amazon's approach compared to other "cloud" storage providers.

It's doubtful that Google or most other online storage provides will offer that however - they want to tie your data to their applications (e.g. edit your documents online, share your files through their web site) - and that just doesn't work if they can't read your encryption.

This is what i did for my storage at home. I subscribed to Amazon's S3 Service http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261 it is inexpensive and easy to use. You will need a client to hook into their infrastructure http://jungledisk.com/ and then you have very reliable inexpensive off line backups. I backed up 4GB of data and it cost me $.40 i was amazed how easy it is to use and the price is right. :)

For cheap, reliable, unlimited storage you can't do better than http://www.jungledisk.com/

I haven't seen any comments about online backup solutions.

They're quite cheap (~ $50-$100 per year with unlimited storage) now and they make for the (almost) perfect off-site backup solution.

I've tried Mozy.com and Amazon S3.

While not technically a dedicated backup solution, Amazon is quite cost-effective for me and has amazing bandwidth -- I can upload or download through my 24/1.2 mbit connection at full speed 99% of the time. Yes, it's not very user-friendly at first, but after setting up JungleDisk (or your choice of WebDAV interface) and any backup application the first time, you just let the scheduler work its way through your data.

Mozy is cheap at $60/year/computer with unlimited storage, but I get modest connection speeds to their servers. Yet, their Windows client is extremely simple to set up. The Mac client (still a beta) is also good, although not ready for "production" work, yet. Linux is a no-go, though.

Of course it's always best to also keep a local device for quick backups/restores of large amounts of data, but the peace of mind and convenience afforded by online solutions... It's priceless to me...

..and besides that, how many tech savvy folks, who probably have even more valuable info on their machines, don't bother with offsite backup?

• Ultra-Edit for text editing. Tons of features but still starts & runs fast. 10MB download, ~10MB ram.
• ACDSee for image viewing. I run an ancient version, so I don't know if the new ones are more bloated.
• Jungle Disk for storage and backup, 1.5MB Win download (4.5MB mac), ~12MB ram. Mozy uses about 30MB.

JungleDisk (http://www.jungledisk.com/) has some built in backup features. S3 storage is cheap and reliable.

At $0.15/gb/month, S3 is already priced better than Google - especially considering you only pay for what you use with no need to pre-pay for a bunch of storage in advance.

S3 is really a different service - you can store anything on it, whereas the Google storage can apparently only be used from Google apps (for now). The other advantage of using software like Jungle Disk with S3 is that your data is encrypted before even leaving your machine, and neither Amazon nor anyone else can access it.

Have a look at Jungle Disk: http://www.jungledisk.com/

What I'm thinking about is using Amazon's S3 service along with JungleDisk to get a cheap online, reliable, unlimited virtual drive for Time Machine to store its backups on. I just hope that Time Machine is smart enough to queue up its transactions when the network storage is not available. I also wonder what the performance will be like.

Things are moving fast in this space. I'd love to see a general online storage solution with WebDAV support, something like Gallery2 or Flickr built-in, permissions management so I can share different files with different people, and low monthly cost.

I back up to Jungle Disk, a free slick front-end for Amazon S3 that lets you use it as a disk drive. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there's GPL'd code that lets other people develop alternative compatible front-ends.

Cost: $0.15 / gigabyte, and my data is replicated in several datacenters on more than one continent.

If you're not a programmer type, then you can use it e.g. through http://www.jungledisk.com/. It'll cost you (for 30GB) $5 a year, but you have an off-site acessable from everywhere, reliable backup.

You might want to check out S3/Jungledisk. S3 by amazon is relatively cheap (15 cents/GB + transfer) and Jungledisk acts as WebDAV middleware. The middleware is still rather basic, but it works for backups, and passes the "are they going to be around in a couple of years" test. All data is encrypted by the Jungledisk middleware.

Jungle Disk is a cross-platform front-end for Amazon S3 that supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. You only pay the Amazon fees ($0.15/gig/month). On Linux you can mount it directly using DavFS then backup using any software you want (rsync, etc). It supports encryption and caching as well.

They left out Jungle Disk.

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.