FTP; Unlimited Storage/Bandwidth; Use for Time Machine or Virtual Drive?

[Ahheck01]

Hey guys, I just took advantage of DreamHost's January 3rd deal that offers their two year, $218 unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth for 95% off ($10.74), and I've got an FTP account set up.

A few questions about FTP in Leopard:

1) Can I set it up as a virtual drive, just like a network drive or something? How?

2) Can I use the FTP connection as an external drive for Time Machine? How?

3) What other power uses of virtually unlimited FTP am I not thinking of?

Thanks in advance!

-Evan

 

[old-wiz]

It sounds like you want to use Dreamhost more as a file storage system than as a web hosting provider.

First unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth only refers to their end; your ISP won't necessarily allow you to do that.

FTP as a drive? Have you ever used FTP? FTP works by very simple low level commands and trying to use it as a disk drive, even if you find some weird interface, is an exercise in frustration. The latency could be unbelievable compared to a local drive. For $200 you could buy a very decent 500 gb external drive that would outperform almost any remote connection. Don't forget that DreamHost will be limited to your internet connection speed - if you have a 10 mb internet connection, that's as fast as you will be able to go.

I don't think there are any real power uses of FTP; it is a very simple protocol for transferring files; each file requires overhead in the form of the protocol of FTP. Also with FTP if you have, for example, a large file on the remote end and want to access it, FTP COPIES the file to your system and then you access it from that. You can't read/write parts of a file via FTP. The comands for FTP would be GET file THEN you would have a local copy and you would read/write that. That is a huge overhead and not an efficient way to use remote storage.

 

[Maxington]

There is a lot that can go wrong with trying to use a remote host like this for all your backup needs. I would suggest if you do use FTP and remote host that you also have a large external as well.

 

[Grimace]

I use Dreamhost as an off-site backup - and the unlimited bandwidth and storage space is great. But, it's a manual backup, and should not replace a faster/easier local interface like an external hard drive. There are a few very complicated hacks out there to tie Time Machine into an FTP server, but it's not worth the aggravation and unbelievably slow speeds, even on fast connections. Ever tried to upload 750GB of data onto your web space? See you next week...

I have four 1TB hard drives in a double-redundant array, with Dreamhost acting as the third manual backup. On site backup first -- then manual offsite backup.