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Dropbox vs iDisk speed comparison figures

thunderbunny

thunderbunny

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 15, 2010
617
0
Cheshire, UK
With all the this versus that threads I have just run a little head-to-head comparison of dropbox and idisk for uploading/downloading files. Same file, same MBA and same broadband (or so Sky laughingly call it) connection.

Dropbox

9.8Mb PDF upload via folder : 2:37
9.8Mb PDF upload via web : 2:03
9.8Mb PDF download via web : 32.5secs

iDisk

9.8Mb PDF upload via folder : 2:14
9.8Mb PDF upload via web : 1:56
9.8Mb PDF download via web: 31.4 secs

Not a massive difference, iDisk just edges it (for me). Am going to look at other services too in more depth, may even post results back here at some point.
 
macography.net

macography.net

macrumors newbie
Apr 3, 2011
21
0
Thanks for posting this. I found the results rather interesting considering that we all tend to think of Dropbox as faster than MobileMe.

I'm looking forward to repeating your tests on my Mac and possibly the PC at work. How did you measure the Dropbox results? Did you simply measure the time it takes the file icon to display the checkmark (upload complete) or you have used some other method?
 
thunderbunny

thunderbunny

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 15, 2010
617
0
Cheshire, UK
macography.net said:
Thanks for posting this. I found the results rather interesting considering that we all tend to think of Dropbox as faster than MobileMe.

I'm looking forward to repeating your tests on my Mac and possibly the PC at work. How did you measure the Dropbox results? Did you simply measure the time it takes the file icon to display the checkmark (upload complete) or you have used some other method?
Click to expand...

No problem. Thought it would be good to get some quantitative data as while I've seen a lot of criticism of iDisk speed & reliability I've found it to be excellent. Maybe there's a big difference between individual accounts so would be good to see other peoples results. (my test pdf is at https://files.me.com/martsims/luamsv).

Yes, for Dropbox it was stopped as soon as the sync symbol turned to the tick. All my measurements so far are one-off's (except for 2 x iDisk - to check my broadband speed was roughly equivalent later on). And it's me & my trigger finger on my iPhone stopwatch so not 100% accurate there.

Since early post have looked at Google docs, Microsoft SkyDrive, Box.net & SugarSync. Will carry on.
 
thunderbunny

thunderbunny

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 15, 2010
617
0
Cheshire, UK
Oh, and for opening a file it was simply just between click and the document opening in Preview.

(the document used was just the first one I had in my docs that was about 10Mb in case you wondered)
 
nutmac

nutmac

macrumors 603
Mar 30, 2004
6,056
7,319
I think your measurement tells only a part of the story. When iDisk works, it's comparable. But it slows down/goes down frequently to be bothersome for many.
 
OneMike

OneMike

macrumors 603
Oct 19, 2005
5,814
1,795
nutmac said:
I think your measurement tells only a part of the story. When iDisk works, it's comparable. But it slows down/goes down frequently to be bothersome for many.
Click to expand...

I've never had iDisk go down frequently in all the time I've been using it
 
Phil A.

Phil A.

Moderator emeritus
Apr 2, 2006
5,799
3,094
Shropshire, UK
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

macography.net said:
A few days ago, I ran some tests myself. The results are right here:

http://macography.net/2011/04/speed-tests-idisk-vs-dropbox/

Thanks for starting this thread, it's been really interesting to find out a little bit more about the two systems.
Click to expand...

Good test, thanks for taking the time. You alluded to the real benefit of dropbox in your write up, and it's something that's often overlooked: when saving a changed file, dropbox only transmits the changes, whereas iDisk sends the whole file again. Depending on the file, the difference can be huge.
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,470
43,394
dropbox is cross platform, where as iDisk really isn't and to be honest, I've always noticed that iDisk to be pathetically slow, where as dropbox to be decent.

I think I read somewhere that dropbox throttles its speed so it works more in the background without affecting foreground processes and network performance

I'm not sure if iDisk throttles its bandwidth or just plain old slow
 
M

marc11

macrumors 68000
Mar 30, 2011
1,618
4
NY USA
Phil A. said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)



Good test, thanks for taking the time. You alluded to the real benefit of dropbox in your write up, and it's something that's often overlooked: when saving a changed file, dropbox only transmits the changes, whereas iDisk sends the whole file again. Depending on the file, the difference can be huge.
Click to expand...

That is a factor of the back up software not iDisk. I Disk is just a repository for stored data, the back up software is what determines what is sent and how it is sent. iDisk will store whatever you or a back up software will put there. If you just drag and drop files of course iDisk will have two complete copies (or one if you overwrite). I need to play with the Apple Back Up software, but I was pretty sure it only saved the incremental changes (like Time Machine) and not the entire file.
 
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