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17 Online File Storage Services Tested

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the kicking-the-tires dept.

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.

7 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. And thankfully... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.

    I'd also note that Apple's .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.

    1. Re:And thankfully... by MustardMan · · Score: 4, Informative

      And a pathetically tiny amount of storage space, and no domain name registration.

      I'd register a dotmac account in a second, if they didn't max out at two gigs of storage.

    2. Re:And thankfully... by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Informative
      I'd register a dotmac account in a second, if they didn't max out at two gigs of storage.

      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.

  2. Re:If you're going to pay for something.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Missing the obvious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    What?! No review of Gmail Filesystem?

  4. Streamload has been my option for 4 years now. by sleeplessmind · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)

  5. Amazon.com's S3 and JungleDisk by kaisyain · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.