Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Plans Gdrive Competitor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the personal-virtual-bill dept.

gambit3 writes "From Microsoft Watch: The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data. From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."

23 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Apple by tchalz · · Score: 4, Informative

    .Mac anyone?

    1. Re:Apple by SamTheButcher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thank you! That's the first thing I thought of. It even has something called iDisk, since the year 2000. (It helps if you say that last part like they do on Conan O'Brien)

    2. Re:Apple by eMartin · · Score: 5, Informative

      In case anyone needs further explanation...

      Apple has offered an online virtual hard drive since the OS 9 days (that's the previous millenium) with .Mac.

      It mounts as any other disk on your system, and even offers sharing with other people from that disk.

    3. Re:Apple by eMartin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Quicktime movie of it in action:

      http://www.apple.com/dotmac/idisk.html

    4. Re:Apple by WhiteBandit · · Score: 3, Funny

      Has Microsoft EVER invented anything original?

      Surely you just! Ever heard of the Blue Screen of Death?

  2. in what way is it like a non-existant product? by gralem · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would say it's more like Apple's iDisk. But that's my weakness--I tend to compare things to products and features rather than rumors.

    ---gralem

  3. free? by joe+155 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How free will this be, I meen both in speach and beer... I would like to see exactly what they would do with each file I upload (i might be paranoid and not having anything too important anyway)... I am also a little concerned about what might happen if the US govt. asks for all my data on their drives (again probably too paranoid)... also I like cheap things

    --
    *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
    1. Re:free? by neoform · · Score: 3, Informative

      If the US government wanted your data that bad they could always just bust down your door and take it you know.

      (I say this since 4 weeks ago I had 7 guys come into my house and seize my computers for copyright infringement. apparently judges think an injunction/seizure is an apropriate way to make sure that "evidence" isn't destroyed.)

      --
      MABASPLOOM!
    2. Re:free? by sunwolf · · Score: 3, Informative
      I meen both in speach and beer


      Your "e" and "a" mysteriously swapped residences, jumping the two words in between. I have to say, I've never seen a spelling error quite like that before.
  4. Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As computer-literate individuals, it is our duty to talk to our less computer-savvy friends and relatives about these types of services.

    While it may seem very obvious to us, they might not stop to consider the privacy aspects of these services, be they from Google, Apple, or Microsoft.

    First of all, we need to make it clear that no financial data should be stored in such a way. That includes spreadsheets and archived tax filings.

    Second of all, any personal documentation should not be placed on such remote drives. This is especially important for the employees of businesses.

    Third of all, it must be realized that nothing will ever truly be deleted from such remote drives. One may think they have deleted their files, but it's quite likely that those files still exist on some server somewhere at Google or Microsoft, if not on backup tapes.

    We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.

    1. Re:Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW. by vux984 · · Score: 3, Funny

      We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.

      I find letting people blindly run headlong into the costly mistakes first makes them much better listeners afterwards.

      Maybe I don't like my friends and relatives enough :)

  5. You'd have to be a fool to use something like this by kcbrown · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ...for anything other than data that you have absolutely no problem with becoming completely public. That, and the fact that you have that data (association like that is itself a form of information that can be of great interest to some).

    I don't care how good they claim their "safeguards" are, they're not going to be as good as they claim, and in any case the companies that host these services are not to be trusted. They do only that which is in their best interests, not yours. Those may be the same thing for a time, but I promise you that's temporary at best.

    --
    Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
  6. it's not unpublicly not announced yet? by pyrrho · · Score: 4, Funny

    "still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced"

    it's been publicly unnanounced, how the fuck do you pull that off?

    I need that skill.

    --

    -pyrrho

  7. Even if the RIAA manages to ... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    shut down peer-to-peer (or simply make people too afraid to use it), I predict that file-sharing will continue unabated as social networks form around these vast online storage facilities. Rather than having to download my music piecemeal, I can just grab someone's entire "g" or "i" or "m" or whatever drive full of gigabytes of tunes. A couple of online swaps and that 60 Gb iPod is going to seem a tad cramped.

    Cool.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  8. Why do people keep saying other's have done it... by AdityaG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why the hell do people yell "OMG it's been done before..." everytime someone comes out with something. More competition is always good. If Microsoft screws it up, well that's too bad, but if it doesn't, hey, we will have another nice service to choose between.

  9. Compare it to the original, please.. by nvrrobx · · Score: 4, Informative

    So in other words, it's actually like Xdrive, the company that started it in the dot-bomb boom.

    http://www.xdrive.com/

    Also, I can't wait for Palm to take them to court because Live Drive sounds an awful lot like LifeDrive.

    http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilemanagers/lif edrive/

  10. Re:You'd have to be a fool to use something like t by spagetti_code · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This would provide the most amazing trolling database ever. Can you imagine the glee within the govt at being able to freely scan every file "owned" by every member of the public.

    And dont think it wont happen because the Patriot act permits data trolling without telling the user (go and talk to you public library - they have to hand over data about you and they are not allowed to tell you).

    Can you imagine the conversation...

    GW: I need access you your Live Drive for anyone named 'ahmed' or 'abbus' or 'abdul' or ... hell just give me it all!
    BillG: sure - if you can call off your anti-trust watchdogs
    GW: consider it done. What is anti-trust anyway??

  11. "Live [blank]" is today's "Active [blank]" by Maxmin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Local Live, Live Drive ... ActiveX, Active Desktop,

    I keep noticing the trend: Microsoft gives their product names a prefix or suffix that adds a sporty/jaunty sense, without changing the name's meaning.

    Pure marketing. In the 80s they prefixed their software with "Microsoft" ... everything had to be "Microsoft [blank]." I liked that, gives strong brand identity. But the Live and Active monkiers are a bit confusing, as they don't contribute a consistent, useful meaning.

    --
    O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
  12. So... by Skynet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft's big secret Web 2.0 push is to copy everything Google does?

    OIC!

    --
    Execute? [Y/N] _
  13. need more than bandwidth for this by acvh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    mounting a drive over the Internet (do we still capitalize that?) involves much OS overhead as well, and that is very slow. during my brief, free, usage of .Mac and its iDrive I was frustrated more than anything else. perhaps if the OS is modified to strip out some of what it does when you mount a drive they can speed it up, but for now FTP serves me better.

  14. Re:Striping? by joe_bruin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not so easily. It is unlikely that they will give you block-level access to the drive. That is, you can't format it. However, there is a solution. You just fill the drive with one huge file that contains a virtual disk image, and now you can format that with anything you want, and raid it with other disk images on other servers.

    As a bonus, you get disk encryption essentially for free. Here is a great app for Windows and Linux for creating and mounting encrypted drives in a file that I've used to do exactly this (on SMB servers). For those of you using XP, here is a guide on how to hack XP to enable the raid5 features that are disabled in the non-server versions.

  15. RoamDrive by ThinkFr33ly · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use RoamDrive. It's free and works with Hotmail and Gmail.

    Eventually they promise a "pro" version that allows you to link as many hotmail and gmail accounts as your want (equating to essentially unlimited storage).

  16. Re:Technical details by grimsweep · · Score: 3, Funny
    This is the first time MS has offered BSODs as a web service and promises a new world in software delivery.

    While notable, this has actually been around for a while. It's called 'ActiveX'.