I am in the research phase for a possible presentation on Cloud Drives and Cloud Storage. Primarily I am looking for file storage services, and not backup services like Crashplan, Mozy or Carbonite.
I know there are many, many storage services out there, like Dropbox, SkyDrive, SpiderOak, UbuntuOne, SugarSync, Wuala, iCloud etc. but I would like to hear what services you:
- Know of and heard positive or negative things
- Use yourself or have experience with (even through work, friends, etc.)
- Like and why (pro’s AND con’s)
Some of these do not work with Linux (e.g. SkyDrive and SugarSync), and some of these work with Smartphones (iOS and Android). I want to hear about them because my audience uses Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone/iPad (and one Windows 7 Phone user).
Unfortunately I do not have an Android or iOS so I don’t know anything about how Cloud drives work with these devices.
So any advice, experiences or knowledge you can pass along would be great!
I currently use spideroak’s 100 GB plan and am quite happy with it.
Pros:
- Their site has an extensive FAQ on basically everything you may think of asking;
- Fully encrypted, unlike dropbox that retain your password and will surrender your data if sufficiently pressed. The downside is if you forget you password there’s no way to recover your data (but you can set a password hint on their site).
- No-hassle opensuse-specific 32 or 64-bit rpm installation;
- Unlimited backup history, you only need the space for it, but backups are diffed, so additional space required is minimal.
Cons:
- Some care is needed if you inadvertently delete a synced file in one of the boxes as it will be deleted in all other boxes during sync, although you can always recover the file from the backup history.
I guess I sound like a fanboy, but the fact is that it is really good.
Oh, and there are clients for windows, osx, ios and android too.
Another con is that I now have a lot of backup pen drives sitting idle doing nothing 
I use Ubuntu One, because of historic reasons. It is okay and got a lot better over time.
- pro:
it is easy to use and has a good free offer,
you also can use it in Linux Mint (but just the Ubuntu based versions)
sharing data is easy
creating folders is easy in the browser interface
there is no client for other distros, just for Ubuntu and installing it on Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Linux Mint is a bit of a hassle.
the browser interface is slow and not very nice, it has some strange pop-ups when you want to upload data and it does not show any progress bar.
sometimes it does not tell you when the files is finished uploading. It just says: “uploading” until eternity.
(a friend of me has this issue) it always thinks that you have forgotten your password and wants you to change it. This happens always when you want to copy files to it = into the Ubuntu One folder. Strange issue and I did not hear about this from other users
@brunomcl : deleting sync’d file on one system effecting others is par for the course. One time I realize I was deleting all of my files on Dropbox and luckily caught it in time but would otherwise would have had to disconnect my desktop before it syncs, and copy the files off Dropbox, plug it in (and sync) and then put the files back. Disaster averted!
@steffen13 : another advantage I have read for UbuntuOne is if it is installed on a Droid (I don’t know about iOS devices) it can auto-sync the pictures you take so if you loose your phone if it was connected to the 'net it may have synchronized them already.
I didn´t know that Ubuntu One is also available for Android. I´ll try that. Thanks for the info!
Amazon offers 20GB data storage for $20 a year, with unlimited music storage. Downside: No software tools to automate uploads, and the music must be MP3 (OGG Vorbis is not recognized).
I have lately been really enjoying SkyDrive on Windows 7. I opened the account early enough they offered to “upgrade” (actually, return back to ) 25GB and my Windows 7 system is synchronizing everything into it. One handy thing is on my wife’s computer I only have it mounted (M: ) so I don’t have to wait while it synchronizes all the changes from the last time I logged in with that machine before I have access to my files. I only go on her computer once in a while.
Now I am trying to see how to mount my SkyDrive in Linux (openSUSE 12.1 Gnome (or KDE) to be specific). I see a mention of needing SME Storage, and I see there is an openSUSE version but is that the only solution available?
I heard of SME Storage from these articled: [Mount / Map Microsoft SkyDrive in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)](Mount / Map Microsoft SkyDrive in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)) and Automatically Mount / Map Microsoft SkyDrive in Ubuntu 11.10 with SME Storage–Part II | Liberian Geek
Related to my presentation, it looks like it will be happening in the latter half of this year (Sep? Oct? Nov?).