So i've spend some time in the last weeks and months trying to find THE BEST solution for my problem. I have ~500GB of data that need a good damn Reliable, Unlimited Cheap Online Storage and Syncing Solution. Specifying:
- Reasonable price: ~ 100U$/year maximum
- Unlimited storage / bandwidth
- Accepts any file sizes
- Makes Backup of all my files (with versioning)
- Syncs to multiple machines
- Syncs external drives
- Syncs just specific folders in each computer
- Has shared folders (file-sharing with coworkers and friends)
- Shares specific files via URL
- Win, Mac and Linux client
- Web access to download/upload files
I've searched many options, including the populars:
And none of them have at least a big part of my needs.
Here is the incomplete research template i did (on google spreadsheet). I intended to finish this list but since there wasn't a perfect choice, i stopped wasting my time on this.
The big issue is that:
- The 'Pay by GB' Solutions (amazon/rackspace) are too expensive for 100GB+
- The 'Unlimited Backup' Solutions don't sync (Mozy etc)
- The 'Syncing' Solutions (Dropbox etc) don't really backup (they sync) and none has unlimited storage
So i decided to wait and keep:
- My Work Documents: Dropbox (a free 2GB account) - which nicely syncs my computers
- My Photos & Collages: Flickr - its unlimited storage, so i still need to upload my older photos
- My Videos: Youtube & Vimeo
- And on the External Harddrive: 100GB of Music and 200GB of Videos (documentaries/movies) - this NEEDS some online backup....
Totally related to this,
see Dan Ariely's presentation (youtube) on this year's TED, around 11min he talks about our problem dealing with choices...