This is not an advertisement; rather, it is a summary of experiences that I have had with a select few popular cloud storage service providers. To cut it short, I finally settled upon using Google Drive and I purchased the InSync software application to sync my System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) to Google Drive.
Dropbox is convenient, but it’s expensive and the past security breaches left me wondering about the privacy and security of my uploaded data. SpiderOak is the opposite in that it’s extremely private and secure, but I didn’t like the fact that it made a duplicate encrypted copy of my uploaded data in the /.spideroak hidden folder in my /home/wellywu partition. I tried CrashPlan+, but the performance was very slow and it doesn’t have any synchronization and sharing capabilities. It also is a pain in the butt to get it to work in OpenSuSE because it relies heavily on Oracle Java ™ JRE 1.6 or 1.7 which does not work as well as with Ubuntu.
Based on cost, storage scalability, availability, and performance along with security, I chose Google Drive. They implemented AES 128 bit encryption automatically some time ago which helped me to make my decision. The only drawback is that Google doesn’t provide a native GNU/Linux desktop client yet. You can use the FLOSS Grive app, but InSync is more feature rich and polished at a nominal price. Google Drive is fast as well and this combination of using InSync does not consume huge system resources and bog down my PC. I purchased the 400 gigabyte cloud storage plan which is affordable and it gives me a significant amount of cloud storage capacity for quite some time in the future based upon my personal data consumption and storage needs for now. I can purchase higher cloud storage capacities in the future as my needs continue to grow steadily at affordable monthly prices. It does include sharing and synchronization capabilities across multiple platforms and devices especially if you use Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh OS X or iOS or Google Android.
I’ve found that Google Drive meets my personal needs at an affordable price and I’d be curious as to what others have tried or what works for others and why. I think that I’ll stick with Google Drive for a couple of months to see how it meets my future needs, but I’m satisfied so far.
I’ve been using spideroak for almost two years now, it serves me well - I’ve posted about it in these fora some time ago.
The big difference is that encryption/decryption is all done client-side, so the cloud provider (allegedly) do not store my password, and consequently can’t give it to anyone, regardless of how persuasive this “anyone” may be.
The drawback, of course, is if I lose my password all my data is lost. This is not as bad as it looks, since any installed client (linux, windows, android, ios, etc.) will store the (encrypted) password, so I can still access my data from any of those previously installed clients, although I cannot set a new password without knowing the current one.
It costs USD 100 a year for 100 GB storage.
It also has most/all the facilities other clouds have, but I mostly use it to sync work data automatically between three computers and eventually download data in a tablet or an android phone.
I’ve used SpiderOak previously, but I requested that they disable my account some time ago. Recently, I asked them to activate my account, but I’m having problems logging in. It says that my user name and password are invalid or it says that I may not be authorized to login from this device when using either the SpiderOak client or the web site. I am dead certain that I have the correct user name and password. I’m not sure what is the problem, but SpiderOak is taking their time to respond to my support tickets that I created about this issue.
It’s a great cloud storage service provider, but I’m wanted a lower cost option that provides much more online cloud storage capacity so I chose Google Drive. Google Drive is very fast. In about one day, I’ve uploaded 186 gigabytes of my data already. I remember CrashPlan+ would take several days to upload 100 gigabytes of my data because they throttled upload speeds to provide a cost effective service and product to all of their users. It does not work with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed 64 bit because it relies heavily upon Oracle Java which is problematic with OpenSuSE. I’ve found that my Moneydance program uses Java as well, but it works. Go figure.
The most important thing is the authentication process and I’ve enabled two-factor authentication with my Google account so it’s secure. AES 128 bit is sufficient for my needs.
I guess that I’ve become a Googler. I also subscribe to their All Access Music service.
SpiderOak deleted my account at my request and I created a new account successfully. I installed the SpiderOak desktop client successfully. I enabled two-factor authentication, but it locked me out of my account when I try to log into the SpiderOak website. I need Alli Blotter to fix this problem ASAP on Monday. Two-factor authentication service doesn’t work so don’t go trying it if you are a SpiderOak customer.
I think that I’ll stick with the free service for a while to see how I like it. If I like it, then I’ll purchase a 500 GB account, but we shall see. Google Drive is meeting my needs quite nicely so far.
Yes, I believe it is/will be difficult to beat big G on anything they decide to do, given the enormous resources they have available. And I do think that, overall, it’s still possible to believe in their “do no evil” motto.
What I don’t think is that they are invulnerable to hacking, so even if they really don’t go through my stored data with a mining bot to “improve my experience” as they proclaim, it can still be stolen, as happened with sony, facebook and other giants, despite all assurances. So I’d rather have my data as a meaningless blob of encrypted data in the hands of some organized crime organization than have same blob AND the passwords in their hands, stolen from big G servers at the same time.
For my needs, I concur it’s not a big deal, as I seldom deal with sensitive (commercial) material of any kind. But if the facility is there and easy to use, why not?
I do hope spideroak can survive in this market, as they are the only ones I know of that use the “zero knowledge” approach.
Thanks for the heads up on InSync. I had seen their software mentioned and wondered how well it works.
Up till recently I have distro-hopped a lot, and I’m already using Google Drive for my backups. I like the speed, I like the two-factor authentication protection that can be enabled, and I like the ability to login with my browser, select multiple folders (Documents, Pictures, etc…) and hit “download”. Google combines and compressed the folders and initiates a download, without any software being installed. It’s great if you want to load a directory structure into distro very quickly.
I’ve recently been trying to find a distro to call home, so hopefully some of my distro-hopping has come to an end. I’m pretty happy with OpenSUSE, so I might pay for Insync and start using it for a long-term backup, without so much manual intervention on my part.
InSync Plus is slick and it works very well. It’s simple to use, but make sure to download the file manager integration which in my case is for Dolphin for Red Hat and SuSE systems. Together, it makes synchronizing data to Google Drive simple and easy. I just upgraded to 1.00 terabytes of Google Drive as my data is roughly 400 gigabytes and I was almost out of cloud storage capacity. I like this better than CrashPlan+ as it’s very fast and it’s safe and secure. I’m paying half of what it would cost for Dropbox and SpiderOak by selecting Google Drive which is a great plus in my opinion. I also like the fact that Google Drive doesn’t encrypt my data locally before uploading it to their data centers worldwide. This saves me several hundreds of gigabytes on my Hitachi Travelstar 5K1500 hard disk drive and it’s much faster to upload and synchronize my data. SpiderOak does this and I don’t like it.
Google Drive is my personal preference and choice for cloud storage. They have a no bullcrap product and service that’s competitive in the market and it’s affordable. I’m going to stick with it for quite some time.
I still use the free SpiderOak service, but I’m limited to 2 GB and I only upload my most critical and confidential data to SpiderOak. This is irreplaceable data that’s unique and useful only to myself. I’ve encrypted the data myself using a variety of FLOSS tools before I uploaded it to SpiderOak so it’s extra safe and secure. I made local backup copies to my Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 128 GB USB 3 thumb drive which I encrypted using TrueCrypt (AES 14 rounds 256 bits SHA-512 using NTFS file system). I don’t think that I want to pay for SpiderOak service for larger cloud storage capacities in the future. I don’t think that I’ll need to do that now that I use Google Drive.
I finally figured out how to log into my SpiderOak account to turn off two-factor authentication. Now, SpiderOak works normally with both their website and their desktop client. I like it, but I wouldn’t pay to have more storage capacity. 2 GB is enough for my confidential data for now. It’s a nice service, but I just don’t like the fact that it encrypts my data locally and it makes a duplicate encrypted copy on my local hard disk drive before it uploads the data to their data centers worldwide. That’s just a waste of local disk capacity and availability in my opinion.
Google Drive doesn’t do this at all and they’re much less expensive. I get twice the capacity for half the price. It’s easy for me to upgrade to up to 16 terabytes of cloud storage capacity in the future or beyond. That’s what I like about Google Drive. The InSync Plus app is cheap and it works flawlessly for GNU/Linux users.
Though Google Drive is more expensive than CrashPlan+, I like the fact that my data is synced and shared with family members and friends based upon my choices to share specific folders or files. CrashPlan+ doesn’t allow its members to share folders or files with others very easily. It’s more of a traditional online backup service. It also doesn’t work with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed or 12.3 64 bit.
Google Drive is a good choice for me. I like it quite a bit now. I think that I’ll keep using it for a while and let it grow on me.
I’ve decided to use SpiderOak as my cloud storage service provider now. I’ve canceled my Google Drive subscription, but I kept the Google All Access Music subscription for now. I like being able to access my encrypted files through SpiderOak knowing that it’s truly private and secure compared to Google. Google Drive is a good product, but I’ve decided to rely on Deja Dup for large backups because I have a Western Digital My Passport 2 TB USB 3 Portable hard disk drive which I encrypted using LUKS. I’ve got a highly secure OpenSuSE Tumbleweed 64 bit installation now and I like to keep it that way for a long time. SpiderOak convinced me with their no knowledge policy. I only have less than 0.50 GB of confidential data that I uploaded to SpiderOak and that’s just about all that I need for a long period of time. I’m happy with SpiderOak. Google Drive is a good second choice alternative if you need to upload large quantities of data to their data centers worldwide though and the prices are very low.
If you don’t mind the questionable security (it is just unproven, there isn’t anything setting off red flags in my head), there is copy.com
You get 15 GB to start, and then 5 GB per reference that signs in using a reference code. I’ve accumulated 167GB from my reference code (https://copy.com?r=wR3jYg) so far.
A factor in my own choice in Cloud Storage is web interface. When I am not at home I rely on the web interface for uploading/downloading and editing. Sadly, SkyDrive is actually not bad at all.
What are the odds of openSUSE ever creating an in-house cloud service for users, similar to ubuntu one or something? Is that too hard to perform and maintain infrastructure and manpower wise? I understand there are plenty of storage options online, but would be nice syncing through geeko
