What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down?

jbrodkin writes "Can you trust your data to the cloud? For users of an online storage service called The Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, the answer turned out to be a resounding 'no.' The Linkup shut down on Aug. 8 after losing access to as much as 45% of its customers' data. 'When we looked at some individual accounts, some people didn't have any files, and some people had all their files,' The Linkup CeO Steve Iverson admits. None of the affected users will get their lost data back. Iverson called it a 'worst-case scenario.'"

Comments

Re:Backups, backups, backups!

[lawpoop]

This is why I always thought that cloud computing based on servers would be disastrous. What if the server goes down? Well, here's a case in point. You lose everything.

I proposed an idea like a P2P backup. Say you have some 20 GB you want to back up. You make 20 GB available on your system, and fire up a P2P backup program. You partner with people who want to backup also, trade backup space, and voila! You have a distributed backup system. It's all encrypted, so you can't get into other people's stuff on your system, and vice-versa. Periodically, the app checks to make sure that all your backup partners are available. If not, it starts negotiating a backup with a new partner.

Of course, you don't want to lose your stuff to a single host going down, you would have a ratio of 3:1 or 4:1 to make sure that you have high availability.