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Is Dropbox still the best for cloud storage?

polaris20 said:
Can't say I disagree with you there, given Dropbox and Google's privacy policies, in particular.
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If it is not by the provider per se, it would be through US politics.

Agreed. Everything's just a matter of time. The only plus side is that the sheer amount of data is overwhelming for them.
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From what I read, not so much. They're not able yet to analyze everything in real-time, but pretty close, and they have developed a very efficient search engine to look for patterns, probably something akin to Palantir. Surely they can keep data for a significant amount of time, and they have the budget to buy hard drives massively. Going on a limb here maybe that's why HDD prices haven't fell much since a few years as they had been doing before.

It is, however seeing as how you can go as simple as a $60 Raspberry Pi and a nice big USB hard drive, I don't see it being a huge issue. I've got a virtual machine running Linux on an ESX host at my house running one mirror, and another mirror running on a Linux-based crusty Pentium 4 at my in-laws, functioning as read-only and backup. Works great!
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That's an option if you can get your hands on one. They're still not very widely distributed, but for the price, they're more flexible than more common solutions like the WD MyCloud.

I was more referring to router's crashing issues, internet connection downtime, power outage, or simply when it is not possible to configure a third-party router, such as at an in-laws' house. Any of these shortcoming can occur rather frequently.

jimthing said:
And I also agree that the pricing is absurd from many of them. Apple's costs way too much and is half-baked and flaky (to be fair, I think it's down to them not having their datacentres up and running just yet to handle more volume with better efficiency at lower cost options), but even more so Dropbox $100/£70 per year for just 100GB (ie. $1.00/GB per year – WTF!?). They don't seem to realise that we do actually know as customers that 1GB of quality local storage can be had for between ¢2-4 don't they, and that may be kept for several YEARS so ~500th of the cost they are asking...
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Well the price is in line with the widely known Dropbox. At least hubiC is much more reasonably priced. But I do agree that cloud storage is overpriced overall.
 
jimthing said:
"Skydrive" is being renamed "Onedrive" apparently.

Just got an email yesterday from MS advising so. I guess they think "it's your 'onedrive' to store everything in" marketing speak, or something.
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They had to change it following a lawsuit from BSkyB who brands everything they have as Sky XXXXX.

Refer to this news article.

The point is made in that link that they are not yet out of the woods with that as there is potential conflict with Ubuntu One.
 
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OldGreyGuy said:
They had to change it following a lawsuit from BSkyB who brands everything they have as Sky XXXXX.

Refer to this news article.

The point is made in that link that they are not yet out of the woods with that as there is potential conflict with Ubuntu One.
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Interesting, thanks.
Jeez, branding anything these days of patent trolls and mass copyright ownership must be a right pain in the backside...

"...let's try 'Sky' => no Sky in UK own that ...erm... try 'One' => no Ubuntu One own that ...erm... try 'Cloud' => no Apple own that ...erm... try 'Boobies' => no hornyporny.com own that, argh?! "
 
Which Cloud Storage should I go for

Hi Everyone
Is Apple also provides cloud Storage Services or should I go for Other Cloud Service provider to backup my Mac data.
Is there any merits of storing data in cloud or should I continue the old way of storage using my external drive.
Thanks
 
Apple give you 5GB of space free...after that it's a paid for option. The cloud seems safe enough, but I'm old school and prefer to store my stuff on my Macs or on my externals....I don't use the cloud for anything.
 
raymond.steve said:
Hi Everyone
Is Apple also provides cloud Storage Services or should I go for Other Cloud Service provider to backup my Mac data.
Is there any merits of storing data in cloud or should I continue the old way of storage using my external drive.
Thanks
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Apple doesn't have a service wherein it backs up your drive. You can only put certain things in there. As far as 3rd party backup solutions, there are many. They usually take a long time, depending on the drive size, to backup since it will be uploading it (background). After which, it is all pretty easy, it automatically backs up new data and archives an old copy of a data if you modify one.

I think multiple back-up solutions are the best. And with online, you can retrieve data from your idevice. Plus, it never hurts to continuously back up your drive to multiple sources. I, myself, use Time Machine to my Time Capsule, I've cloned my drive and use CrashPlan.
 
Cubytus said:
I was more referring to router's crashing issues, internet connection downtime, power outage, or simply when it is not possible to configure a third-party router, such as at an in-laws' house. Any of these shortcoming can occur rather frequently.
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I guess. I have none of these issues, nor does anyone I know. I guess I'm just in a reliable area with reliable power, internet, and routers.
 
Consumer-level routers DO fail, usually at the least expected time, and usually require assistance to get back online. Same goes for Internet connection stability. And a typical internet connection upload speed is usually too slow to upload anything quickly enough, hence my lack of interest toward any heavy, home-based service.
 
Anyone here using Skydrive/Onedrive on their Mac? The app store reviews seem pretty bad and just wondered if it was actually working ok or not?
 
OldGreyGuy said:
Working OK for me on OS X 10.9.1 rMBP 13.3" 8GB RAM i5 2.6Ghz 512GB SSD.
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Thanks. That's good to know. Will install it tonight and see how I get on.
Was just a bit wary considering the app store reviews.

I use dropbox at the moment but my 50GB will be coming to an end soon and I have 25GB skydrive account so was going to switch over to that. Just hope it works as flawlessly as Dropbox does on Mac and iOS devices.
 
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I use my dropbox for:
Backup documents on multiple machines
Regular backup of my wordpress site via plugin
Forms on wordpress site furnished by jot form.com dropbox integration
Convert anything using the cloudconvert site

I know Dropbox not strictly a backup solution, but as I've got 23GB free storage, and versioning it seems like the right thing, as some other online backup solutions cost a lot for similar storage solutions.
 
Switched to Copy and it works horribly for me. It's slow to upload, freezes. When I send links the dl speed is very slow and the files are corrupted. My PSDs are missing layers.

I guess maybe Dropbox is worth it.
 
maflynn said:
Not too sexy, but it does what you want it to do. i think Dropbox is a solid product, though I wish there was more storage being offered for free.
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hubiC does just that. 25GB free, and from the largest hosting company with such a high reputation, out of beta phase, it can't be bad.
 
I'm hooked to Dropbox. When my 100Gb Pro account expired last December, I din't renew and try to work with Synology CloudStation and copy.com mostly but 1 month after, I re-susbcribed to Dropbox.

For me and my use, it's the best, even if it's a bit on the pricey side and misses a few options I'd really like.

However, more than ever, there are really good alternative.
 
dagdagdag234 said:
I back up all my photos and videos , now at 21gb, so I subscribe to Dropbox 100gb.
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Dropbox has amazing sync and sharing and I'd be lost without it — but I don't use it for the bulk of my offsite backup. I make a monthly clone of my HD with Carbon Copy Cloner and keep it in my work desk. Takes about 10 minutes a month to maintain with Carbon Copy Cloner, even if many many GB of stuff is new or changed. The drive is encrypted. Another side benefit is that if my home Mac and attached Time Machine drive were both destroyed or stolen, I'd be one very fast restore away from being up an running again (vs. downloading 1.5 TB of stuff)

But even if you do want to stick with online backup, I'd consider seeking out a cheaper service for the pure backup and use Dropbox and its awesome but comparatively expensive space for what you're more actively working on.
 
mashinhead said:
Switched to Copy and it works horribly for me. It's slow to upload, freezes. When I send links the dl speed is very slow and the files are corrupted. My PSDs are missing layers.

I guess maybe Dropbox is worth it.
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see i am finding copy to be as good as dropbox, but with more space.

i tried box.com, and although 50gigs was great, i kept having problems where the upload would stick, plus it wouldnt upload anything over think it was 200 meg or something.

the only problem ive had with copy was the 2nd last update broke the 'open with' button on ipad, and i use it a lot for getting magazines onto my ipad and transferring them to ibooks, but the last update fixed it.
 
octothorpe8 said:
Takes about 10 minutes a month to maintain with Carbon Copy Cloner, even if many many GB of stuff is new or changed. The drive is encrypted. Another side benefit is that if my home Mac and attached Time Machine drive were both destroyed or stolen, I'd be one very fast restore away from being up an running again (vs. downloading 1.5 TB of stuff)
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Would you please share your technique as to how you encrypt a TM-linked directly-attached drive? Assuming your internal HDD isn't encrypted for performance's sake.
 
MacDawg said:
Still loving DropBox here

I use Google Drive, SugarSync, Box for a few things, but DropBox is my workhorse

Could not function without DropBox and Evernote
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Same here. I'd put OneDrive or Skydrive or whatever it is now second only because it's very VERY Microsoft centric, and doesn't come with 50GBs of free storage when you buy an Android.
 
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