My adventures with choosing an on-line storage provider

[stevech]

EDITED 9/5/11 to clarify, add one more provider...
new text shown like: New text.

As in the title of the thread...

Goal: Choose an off-site storage service provider in addition to my local backups, and have a means to share with selected friends/relatives, and to have a me-exclusive store to get to certain files using any PC. Low cost. Reliable. Multiple PCs. At least 100GB. Bandwidth management to prevent slow response time if transfers are on-going on any PC, via my 20/1Mbps cable modem.

So the industry jargon is

1. Backup with versioning, selected folders on multiple PCs
2. Virtual drive used mostly on my primary home PC.
3. Synch folder(s) - among 1 to n PCs, me or selected friends/relatives
4. Web browser access to any uploaded files

and the list above is what I sought.

Security: Not an issue with me: anything sensitive - I encrypt myself, independent of the service providers' security, then upload that encrypted file, e.g., an encrypted ZIP file or TruCrypt or SafeHouse.

Here's the ones I tried for a period of time to give it a fair chance - and a one-liner on what I thought of it:

• Google Storage - low cost, file size limits so I couldn't upload, say, a 200MB zip file. Does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• DropBox - high cost, does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• Mozy - high cost, does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• Carbonite - high cost, single PC, does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• iDrive - does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• Adrive - does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• SugarSync - Cost, does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• elephantDrive - High cost
• onlineStorageSolution.com - low cost. Unusably slow day after day. Buggy software. Many user complaints causing an F rating by BBB (though they are a non-member). They did refund my payment promptly.
• Acronis Online - inexpensive but is backup-only so far. - does not do all the functions (above) that I want
• LiveDrive - Seemed flaky prognosis
• DragonDisk (another Amazon S3 front-end) -overpriced
• SkyDrive - Microsoft. I didn't (want to) evaluate this as it drives you into their black hole
• ZumoDrive - Good, but was acquired by motorola and that worried me. Not all features I wanted, but the key ones.
• crashplan - not the model I wanted.
• Symantec (backup.com) - an evolutionary mess and absurdly bad support
• Hitachi Backup - does not do all the functions (above) that I want and sale of Hitachi storage raises questions
• SymForm.com... A very curious one: $0.00 for 100GB. Yes, there's a rub: You have a PC that's on 80% or more of the time, and on that PC you run their client software. And you set aside at least 160GB of disk space (a partition, a folder on a bigger drive, space on a NAS with a windows UNC (\\computer\xxx", a mapped drive letter, etc.). You decide how much of your upstream/downstream bandwith you give up, on two schedules: workday and other times. You tell the client what folders to backup or synch. The client uses your donated space, as a $0.00 user, to store fragments of binary coded file/byte fragments of other users' data. They say the user files' bytes are bit-split and stored in several places. So no one can decipher the file content (a legal/liability indemnification). And there's redundancy. If a storage contributor drops out, the data is located elsewhere. Curious, I tried it for a couple of days, running on a dedicated Atom PC with Win7. Indeed, in 12 hours they put 600MB on my donated 1,500MB space. But they uploaded only at about 100Kbps, whereas I permitted 800Kbps. Slow. There's no interactive file retrieval or virtual drive to mount. Reading their user forum, it sounds iffy for what I want to do. Maybe more aimed at people backing up their workforce's laptops, or some such. I decided to drop out. They do have a paid plan: $10.00/mo for unlimited storage, with, I think, no required donation of storage space. But interesting concept - It's like RAID 100 with drives all 'round the globe.

and in its own category

• OpenDrive - which seemed really good, low cost. Until they went unusable for 3 weeks due to a migration to a new data center. But more over, the founder's name appears in Internet searches regarding shady deals. And their service offers pay for download via PayPal. I wouldn't use it, but this could get them shut down by the authorities, and I don't want to be collateral damage.

So I settled for
JungleDisk (an Amazon S3 front-end). Unfortunate choice of names for a supposedly reliable product. Has all the features. Relatively low annual cost for JungleDisk itself, with 5GB included. Then it's 14 cents per GB per month after 5GB. For the space I need, that's price competitive with the $50/yr competitors. I hope Amazon's back end storage proves reliable. JungleDisk also offers RackSpace.com as the storage provider for about the same price. The virtual disk seems reliable and easy. And the other features listed above in the want-list all work seemingly fine. I won't do full disk backups this way of course (my ISP upload speed is of course too slow). Many of these companies have a service (free or not) where you send them a USB drive with your big batch of files. My full disk backup is a partition image (Acronis) and a boot disk clone (Acronis). The online is mostly third copies of irreplaceable files/folders like family photos (we all swap photos), my encrypted using WinZip or SafeHome/TruCrypt for personal data, and so on. Those that say they encrypt my data for storage - have to do so with a means to decrypt to meet a court order. That's OK by me- except it's likely that a disgruntled employee will steal access to the encryption keys and do evil. If I encrypt with independent software then upload, the risk is gone.

I do this offsite backup despite doubly-redundant local backup - because I feel the most likely scenario is that a burglar steals my computer stuff to pawn. Less likely is a fire/flood.

So, what I have now can be canceled with a prorated refund as I read it.

So that's my adventure so far.

If there are providers I didn't list - holler up. And so too, for dissenting opinions.

 

[claykin]

Stevech

Good to hear you tried and seemingly like Jungledisk.

A couple things I want to clarify:

Jungledisk permits users to choose storage on Amazon S3 or Rackspace cloud. Rates for each are below.

Amazon S3 Storage
$0.14 per GB-Month of storage used
First 5 GB Storage FREE

Data Transfer
$0.00 per GB of data uploaded
$0.12 per GB of data downloaded

Data Request
$0.01 per 1000 upload requests
$0.01 per 10,000 download requests

Rackspace Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
First 5GB Storage FREE

Data Transfer
No charge

Data Request
No charge

So while Rackspace is $0.01 higher than S3 for space, Rackspace does not charge any out fees or put/get request fees.

FYI, Rackspace acquired Jungledisk close to 3 years ago.

At this time JD does not offer the option to "seed" the backup by sending data to them on drives, etc.. This has been a highly requested feature by some users and hopefully it will be available soon.

I know that Crashplan and Backblaze both offer seeding for a $.

Look here to see if you missed anyone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services

 

[claykin]

Stevech

You might also want to check out Wuala

http://www.wuala.com/en/

 

[GregN]

Steve,

It would be cool if you would expand your (very good) initial post. Prioritizing your criteria, from least to most important - and then indicating which of those capabilities were missing from the services you reviewed, I think would really help folks out.

 

[stevech]

Steve,

It would be cool if you would expand your (very good) initial post. Prioritizing your criteria, from least to most important - and then indicating which of those capabilities were missing from the services you reviewed, I think would really help folks out.

I'll edit it. Will that cause it to appear as "new" to people who've already read it? or do I need to dupe/edit and save as a new item in the thread?

BTW, My short bullet list of wants are all mandatory. I wanted a Reader's Digest of cloud service providers, unlike smallCloudBuilder which is comprehensive.

 

[GregN]

I'll edit it. Will that cause it to appear as "new" to people who've already read it? or do I need to dupe/edit and save as a new item in the thread?

BTW, My short bullet list of wants are all mandatory. I wanted a Reader's Digest of cloud service providers, unlike smallCloudBuilder which is comprehensive.

Take a look at Dennis Wood's approach for his sticky thread, pfSense for Newbies.

I'd update it, footnote the update in red, then do a post noting such. Just a suggestion, it won't be marked new.

The question on criteria, the mandatories. I understand they don't hit your criteria, but other folks may have a smaller scope, and they could see your decisions points. Numbering the criteria, and listing the numbers in your "(ABOVE)" asides I think would do it.

Thanks again for the work, cool.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

As someone that works with Microsoft products all the time, I can't believe I've ignored Windows Live Mesh for so long.

I actually used it a couple of weeks ago to "transfer" stuff from my old dying laptop, to my new laptop. And while at it...with my office workstation. My Documents, pics, music. And they keep a copy in Microsofts cloud...SkyDrive.

Another great feature..and runs so much smoother than logmein or gotomypc....is the Remote Desktop proxy that Live Mesh has...connect to computers that you designate to be available. Dual monitor host even.

Settings in Microsoft Outlook transfer over great too...my nk2 file for address shortcuts, and my signature which took a long time to get right due to buttons and graphics. Saved me a lot of time.

 

[Sarah]

Stevech

You might also want to check out Wuala

http://www.wuala.com/en/

I use Dropbox for my everyday documents, but I prefer Wuala becase of its client-side encryption. And they offer 5 GB of storage for free accounts

 

[stevech]

(reviving old post)

lots and lots of retailer cloud storage providers give 5GB free. Perhaps because they resell Amazon and that's their retail and wholesale cap.

I would up dropping on-line services and use a small NAS plus triple backup to my own media. Mainly because my residential ISP service is only 1Mbps uplink.
And... I cannot trust my financial data to these companies due to too many security breaches by disgruntled employees and so on. You must encrypt using a method totally independent of the service provider's products, due to the service providers' responsibility to decrypt upon court order (US law).

Another constraint to watch out for is max file size.

On Wula ... probably unimportant, but LaCie was recently acquired by Seagate.

 

[yaffahD]

I like to save money but I also like features. So, I use a combination of file storage providers to get the most bang for my buck. I have a free storage account with Dropbox that gives me 2 GB of space. I use this account to manage all my work documents. Since I work mostly with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, I have yet to run out of room on my free account.

 

[stevech]

reviving...

I've been using Amazon's S3 and EC2 free service. Neat. A little intimidating at first, for the non-geek. But freeware like CloudBerry makes it easier.

Amazon's prices even for the next step up from free are reasonable. Lots of Amazon S3 resellers, and I've tried some of them. But what I speak about above is fine, and no pass through markups.