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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
Except that if a fire took out your office, your carefully installed harddrive would be gone too.
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.
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).
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.
iBackup is a datacenter. I'd be surprised it they didn't have a nice Halon system in place. They can afford the kind of site-based protection that smaller offices can't. Also, as other posters have mentioned, if they do have a fire it only takes out the backup. As long as your live systems are working, you can backup to somewhere else. Data in 2 places is more secure against loss (but more vulnerable to theft/unauthorised access) than data in 1 place.
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
at least Mozy does, even in their free offering.
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?
Mozy encrypts all data locally using a 448-bit Blowfish cipher before uploading. You can chose your own private key when installing the software- even the free accounts.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
You ought to look at ExaVault. $25 for 50GB or $40 for 100GB. The catch (or the bonus?)... its cheap because they use open source software (e.g. rsync).
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!
Sounds like you could use a Dedibox from http://www.dedibox.fr/
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.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
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).
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
This service does look fantastic for the price. They offer 50GB for $15/month and unlimited transfers with samba/nfs/sftp/ftp/rsync support, which is much better than the services reviewed in the article.
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 use these guys?
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.
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.