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17 Online File Storage Services Tested
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.
...there's a printer friendly version with the entire article on one page, so you don't have to click through 458 different pages, each with its own half-sentence of the article on it.
.Mac service is missing. It provides AFP, WebDAV, and web-based access for Mac (and Windows) users, as well as online file storage, online file, calendar, mail, and preference syncing, online backup, and the normal collection of web and email services.
I'd also note that Apple's
it's still cheaper and faster to buy a harddrive, and pay someone twenty bucks to install it.
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.
A perfect place to put your data. And for only $4.95 per year more, they'll make it private.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm kind of dissappointed they didn't look at http://www.esnips.com/. I know it's still beta, but 1 Gb storage free look like the best one going.
For businesses wanting online storage and sharing of files, an obvious contender not mentioned in the article is Microsoft's Sharepoint, which is available as a hosted service from a number of providers such as Apptix (who have a free 30-day trial).
Reminds me of a scene in The Turing Option where the main character has to physically make a trip to an out of country data dump to retrieve some bad mojo. This leads to a question of where the posts data dumps are located? Which jurisdictions do they fall under and therefore what laws? ;) ).
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 (
Shh.
I'm still pissed about MySpace. I uploaded all 10MB of my pirated mp3s there back in 1999 (I also used IDrive until they too sold out). Now MySpace is just a cesspool of bad web design and a mirror of our vapid post-millennial American excuse for a culture.
I want my 10MB back.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Anyone who takes thier data seriously would never think of doing such a thing. You have no idea what happens when your files get copied to some third party network.
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.
What?! No review of Gmail Filesystem?
about five years ago a friend turned me to streamload for file sharing. I tried it out and didn't like the fact that i had to get people to send the files to me through unaffiliated forums, so I quit. However a year later, I was going to Australia for an unknown amount of time, but i couldn't Bing my HD. I turned to streamload once again but this time for file hosting. Now I use it for file sharing, and back-ups when I need to (currently in Japan, so it helped a lot.) Their new service is a little buggy still but over all Streamload is the way i would go. It is cheap as follows:
- 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/
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.)
That's why I just use http://www.dropload.com/ when I want to move big files around.
AWS S3 doesn't have the best interface, but it is cheap ($0.15/GB/yr), fast, and reliable. And they'll XSLT transform your XML for you on the fly.
I can't believe that while the headlines are filling with reports of spilled personal ID data, PC World would even consider recommending any distributed data service that doesn't encrypt your data locally before sending it over the network for storage. Instead, they include the weak "Be sure to encrypt all files holding personal data", when of course that's the first feature that every service should automate. PC World influences millions of naive PC users around the world, and flipping off security like that is causing people to take serious risks that can't be undone. It's like a car magazine ignoring the flashy new models failure to include door locks, with an afterthought "be sure to remove all your valuables from your car".
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.
--
make install -not war
whats wrong with ftp?
Unfortunate that the review doesn't mention S3 or JungleDisk as those are excellent options for these same things and are much cheaper for most uses than e.g. GoDaddy. Their open source clients do lots of nice caching and encrypting as well.
Ifolders rocks. It's different in that everybody has the files locally but all files are synced. Cross platform too. Really great and open source.
evil is as evil does
UUEncode your files and post them to slashdot as replies. Easy file storage and you get mod points at the same time!
Rock on!
at least Mozy does, even in their free offering.
The biggest problem (aside from upstream bandwidth, which isn't something they can necessarily do anything about) is obviously price. I know lots and lots of people who've looked at this kind of storage for backup, but invariably just go to using hard drives with USB enclosures because they are thousands of dollars less than it would cost to use even the cheapest of these services for more than a few dozen gigabytes of data.
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.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Why are we discussing the merits of 17 different online storage services when you can host your own for pennies? Mine is a PII 75Mhz that I bought for $25 and it's sitting 3 feet away from me.
Oh, and if you'll excuse me:
For fast no fucking logins try http://www.stashbox.org/ If you need to upload and share more then the default. Enter gay into the box for extra wide bandwidth.
I'm surprised they didnt review raidarray.net. I use this service. Supports:
/.'ers... Just say no to trolling for money.
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
OMG... I have a sig?
Without that information a review is *completely* useless. Which ones support rsync, scp, NFS, AFS, NCP, CODA, etc.? You have to be able to copy files to/from the service for them to be useful. I gave-up on the online services since not a single one I found would support any standard method of file access. I'd pay a good bit for offsite storage with access via standard rsync.z
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.
as far as I know anyways. Encryption is going to be just as safe for 99% of the world as having it sit on some hard drive within their control.
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 about security you most likely already encrypt everything anyways and uploading it somewhere is going to change the safety of your data much.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
You say it's too expensive and then you say you're concerned about these services going out of business.
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.
I was using .Mac but got irritated by its backup software bugs and GUI-only operation and access unreliability, not to speak of size limit (they did increase it lately, though).
For easy backup (rsync) and secure web access to files and sharing (https), no bandwidth limit, the Strongspace is perfect. I like it a lot and recommend it everywhere (as you can see for yourself)...
Please check out FolderShare (www.foldershare.com). All you need is to have a computer on-line somewhere, and you can easily set up syncing with your computer anywhere. Pretty nifty. I use it for backups of my computers. I have one computer at work, and two computers that share the same folders at home. No longer need for backup.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
I personally use Strongspace. Its a secure file storage solution which is accessible with a web interface or sftp and even rsync. Since the storage is built upon ZFS, it allows for some nifty tricks as multiple backups and even revisions. And did I mention that they use GiB? I mean, that has to be turn on for you folks. Here is a list of plans on offer, how you can put it to good use and some FAQs. Check it out!
You encrypt the data yourself...
Get your Unix fortune now!
If it's the security of offsite storage you want, there is a better solution.
:-)
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
It's only on Windows, but at work we use Connected TLM.
It's fantastic.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
You're not missing anything. Dot Mac is not a serious contender. Unfortunately I only found this out after buying a .Mac subscription. On the box it seemed pretty neat. But it turns out that it literally does not contain any encryption - anywhere. So it's absolutely useless for my needs.
.Mac mail server does not support secure connections.
.Mac really is a disaster waiting to happen. Having an automated backup / sync set to happen every few days + checking .Mac email + casually using wireless internet at a public WAP == intercepted data. It's absolutely unacceptable.
Here's my bullet point summary:
* The Windows iDisk client simply does not work (I've yet to get the client to connect).
* iDisk traffic is not encrypted.
* Backup archives are not encrypted. From the help file: "Backup doesn't encrypt information it backs up."
* iSync does not use encryption.
* The
Maybe I'm spoiled by having access to an encrypted IMAP mail server - but their lack of security seems absolutely terrible.
I also don't like that Apple can casually view all the data that I upload to iDisk (since there's no encryption).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For encrypting single files, gpg is probably the simplest solution. Note that you don't have to bother with key-rings, digital signatures, etc. Just use conventional encryption and a GOOD (can't emphasize this enough) password.
A more user-friendly approach would be to use an encrypting file system, such as TrueCrypt, which presents a single file as a drive on your machine, and backup the encrypted file regularly.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Never mind, I am an idiot... (memo to self: do research before submitting comment...)
The old Myspace.com closed it's doors back in 2001. The new MySpace beast is unrelated to that old site. (Google link doesn't require soul-sucking registration...)
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
"A cheap backup service..."
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.
I'm amazed nobody's mentioned rsync.net so far, particularly on Slashdot. Cheap storage, access via rsync, instructions for mounting it remotely on Linux/FreeBSD (as well as Windows), plus they've given some thought to both the legal and privacy aspects: "rsync.net does not merely recommend that users encrypt their data, but provides resources, tutorials and unlimited technical support for such usage".
I mean, nobody reads TFA anyway, but if the shill^Wposter puts the summary of the article in the Slashdot submission, why would we even read the article?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Here's a useless trick for free online backups I used to pull when doing fresh installs back in the late 80s/early 90s..
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.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Nice! http://www.filefactory.com/ lets you upload up to 500 MB free without giving them an email address.
-- Boycott Shell
I used http://www.filesocket.com/ in the past without any issues, no bullcrap ads and spyware.
...that'll let my group of friends create our own back-up service? I could easily gather up half a dozen ADSL 24/7 users who would be willing to donate 5GB of space for 1GB 5xMirrored. It'd be a gentlemen's agreement, not a SLA and they could of course block/delete it at any time, but then you've made a poor choice of friends. With a swarm download (getting a few blocks from each friend) speeds should be good even with the low upload. Back-up services are a bit too much like insurance companies - they compete really hard to give you the lowest price - but then they're also a bitch to get money out of. I'd much rather have a bunch of friends I could call up and say "hey, I just had a disk crash so I hope you don't mind that I leech 24/7 for a little while."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As others have point out, they're missing a number of free alternatives.
The one I use is RoamDrive. 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.
From the article:
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.
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.
Companies like Iron Mountain, Lucid Information Systems, Managed Backup and Data Electronics all offer the ability to pay someone else to worry about your backups.
These comanies will manage your backups for you.... so you can sleep easy.... Just another possibility...
I am not surprised that the article did not have rsync.net in the comparison, since their candidates were pretty consumer-grade.
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 redundancy. I have my data backed up automatically to both San Diego and Denver, and this is being expanded this summer to Switzerland, India, and Japan.
rsync.net is going to be the "kleenex" of offsite storage, at least for sysadmin/Unix people.
I suspect that they are alone in doing this, at least among offsite backup companies. rsync.net has adopted an extremely progressive privacy policy, and augmented it with a "warrant canary" which serves to alert the customer base when a search warrant or subpoena has been served that is "secret", as per provisions in the USA PATRIOT act.
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.
Their warrant canary is sheer genius. I love these guys!
Once I established that my technical requirements were taken care of (rsync uploads, with random access browsing over sftp and webdav) I made my choice based on my perception of their technical acumen and general cluefulness.
Whoever answers the pre-sales email address discussed rsync command line options with me, and offered to help write a log-trapping script (!)
Then I saw the warrant canary, and that was it. We all got an email last month describing the addition of subversion support and the multiple country offsite locations. It just keeps getting better.
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, which is a secure replacement for the simple-minded Unix crypt(1) utility. The FreeBSD port makes installing a breeze, as usual.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
.... raidarray.net, which seems to be broken / not allowing new signups, or god knows what.
Whereas you are talking about / recommending rsync.net. Which I second (third ?)
I looked into GoDaddy's FIleFolder last year when I renewed my domain, but I decided against it when I learned there was no easy way to access it for linux file backup (I was thinking via Samba/WFS, maybe NFS, or FTP if desperate). I saw one on the site that had FTP. Anyone know of a decent one that supports something more secure like Samba of SFTP?
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
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.
I'm happy with Filecloud for file sharing. It has a couple of free versions and a "premium" version that's $4.95/month. The quota isn't as large as I might like, only 500MB on the premium version, but it uses the open standard WebDAV, so I can mount my folder on my KDE desktop. My friends and family don't have to have any account in order to download my pictures and stuff. Filecloud works as advertised. I didn't know I needed it until (1) I bought a digital camera and (2) I found that the premium subscription is included in the monthly fee I pay Speakeasy for broadband service.
I'm sick of this online backup shit! Everyone seems to completely forget some critical freaking details when talking about these services and the article completely forgot about them too.
1. Is the data encrypted before it leaves your server and is it stored in its encrypted form? If not, the service is completely useless!
2. Does the backup preserve ACLs with ownership and permission information for all platforms? If not, then it isn't a proper backup!
3. While it's nice that the nightly differential run only takes 30 minutes, how long does it take to restore 30GB or more of data? On a T1 connection, it'll take 3 days!!!!
4. Do these services offer bare metal restores? Ha!
5. What about reporting? Do any of them alert you when a backup encounters an issue? Do they warn me when my Exchange backup has hung? For that matter, will they let me backup individual mailboxes?
When my server fails, I need it up again in less than one day, not 3 days or more. I need it restored to its original state with all permissions and shares intact. While my data is out of my possession, I need it to be completely indecipherable by anyone including the NSA.
None of the online backup services can provide these absolutely essential backup software features. Therefore, they are all shit! They belong in the same category as those that do their disk backups to CD-ROMs. Good backups require a lot more than a web interface to Rsync!
...if you're not living in a third world country, with expensive, severely crippled, capped broadband. In South Africa, for example, it's cheaper to FLY to Hong Kong, spend few couple of hours downloading and burning 100GB, and then fly back again with your disks. I kid you not :)
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
I guess their canary is dead ?
Because the date is already over a week old ; guess the ozone from the servers must have hit it...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..