LiveDrive vs GDrive vs Personal Data Storage? 126
ozmanjusri asks: "At a blogger's breakfast prior to the opening of Tech.Ed in Sydney, Microsoft Australia technical specialist John Hodgson has confirmed that Microsoft will introduce its LiveDrive online storage system which can be mapped directly as a Vista drive. The service will offer 2GB of space free, with additional capacity available at a cost. Earlier this year, rumors surfaced regarding a similar scheme from Google, the GDrive. There are already hacks to do this with GMail, but Google's goal with GDrive appears to be infinite storage, accessible from anywhere. Meanwhile, the price of portable USB flash drives has been falling to the point where 2GB drives are cheap enough for every day storage purposes. Is this the start of a new era of (nearly) free online storage, thin clients and OS independent services? Will data storage which is tightly integrated to the OS be more attractive to the average user, or will we prefer to have our information stored on a physical media we can put in our pockets?"
Not for me (Score:4, Insightful)
1. I'm in Australia, and bandwidth is expensive in Australia. Cable ISPs offer plans like 10gb per month, and some DSL ISPs offer up to 60-70gb per month. Some are upstream + downstream added together. It's not much when you're considering storing your stuff on the net.
2. I'm on cable, and the upstream bandwidth is terrible. 64k if I'm lucky. I really don't want to wait hours to store my files on somebody elses server.
3. I'm sure plenty of people will make statements like "What about the privacy!? I don't want google looking at pictures of my kids!". I don't really care, but it's certainly an issue.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
1. I, an American, sympathize. When I move out of my parents' place and get my own Internet connection, I'm most definitely going for a plan that won't limit me on data transfered.
2. It doesn't have to be for large files, small personal files can be backed up to such a service more easily than burning a CD or DVD. Plus, this is MICROSOFT.COM we're talking about here. I've never found a better server for download rates, at least. Upload rates will probably be good as well. Same with Google.
3. That's
Re:Not for me (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Judging by this, you're with BigPond, who offer at least 128kbps upstream (not that that's great), or 17mbps/256kbps for $10 a month more. I have the 256k plan and I know several people nearby are on my segment (based on the number of wireless nets I can see, the knowledge that we are outside DSL range, and Optus didn't cable the street for reasons of "commercial viability"), yet I never see less than 24kilobytes/sec.
Thankfully, though, I'm moving to
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
True, they're price gouging, but only because US ISPs price gouge them [dcita.gov.au] (sorry, word document). From the document:
Re:Not for me (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not for me (Score:4, Funny)
Does this have something to do with tubes?
Would tiered service help? (Score:2)
If I'm not mistaken, most of the justification for the pay-per-MB service there is because US backbone providers and ISPs charge their Australian counterparts for peering/interconnect privileges. They charge because there's much more traffic flowing from Australia (initiated by Australian customers, to outside servers) than there is in the other directi
Re: What about the privacy? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, if you upload your stuff as plaintext.
Personal data no longer personal (Score:2)
I'm sure plenty of people will make statements like "What about the privacy!? I don't want google looking at pictures of my kids!". I don't really care, but it's certainly an issue.
It's not just that someone else can rummage through your personal data, it's that they can forbid you access to your personal data if they were so inclined, or network problems could cause you to not be able to access it, or they could lose it. This is on top of things like the potential for blackmail, or plagarism if you sto
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
it's the pictures of the girlfriend I don't want the wife and kid to see.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A sadistic perv sees my documents, sees children's pictures, thus:
Hypo
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
A lot COULD happen...the chances are slim that they will.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll take more chances with my own self than with my children's lives and well-being.
I prefer something in my pocket (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I prefer something in my pocket (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You'd get 4GB of (slow) storage, but anyone with access to only the thumbdrive or online acct would see 2 GB of garbage.
It'd be (2x) faster than just the online account.
For redundancy you could mirror the LiveDrive/GDrive onto another account/server.
Re: (Score:2)
I assume you mean AES or something along those lines...RSA is generally used with keys of at least 1024 bits.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
shut up f007
wtf, man? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've been on IRC for 11 years. NO ONE has ever used it that way.
Re: (Score:2)
11 years, lol
as i said, johnny come lately
Exactly, but that's its strength! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You had to pick today to ask that... (Score:2)
Other than that, though, a 4GB USB drive is under $100 these days, and if you can avoid the evils of caffeine consumption, it's possible to load a reasonable Linux system, y
iPod working again (Score:2)
it seems to be working fine again. Didn't even lose my music when
iTunes wanted to update its OS.
Privacy (Score:2)
Do I trust them to host my files and not go through them?
Again, with cheap HDDs and cheap USB drives, is this necessary?
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. As long as your files are in a TrueCrypt volume.
http://www.truecrypt.org/ [truecrypt.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. As long as your files are in a TrueCrypt volume.
Interestingly enough, there are many in which merely allowing outside third parties to be aware of the existance of your data may be as bad as them being able to read it. Case in point: if you are arrested by a government in places that permit it, they may compell you to give your encryption keys, and thus they can read whatever they want. Your best bet against that kind of intrusion
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
TrueCrypt supports two levels of plausible deniability to combat this though, and it's something that set it apart from other utilities like this.
TC can put a hidden "inner" volume inside your encrypted volume, that is simply mountable with a different password. But there's no way to prove that such a volume exist (TC volumes are indistinguishable from random data, and even file system and unused data is encrypted) and that you have more passwords than one for the "outer" regular encrypted volume.
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO, the fact that TC can do this means that governments (or whoever) will be suspicious any time you surrender your password key to them. There are s
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That's how Google makes its money, hippy.
wow 2 gig.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see why anyone would really need to have that storage online at MS or Google. Email maybe, but not data.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Note that I wasn't necessarily saying it's a great backup solution, just that it does offer something that a 2GB flash drive doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Insurance companies don't cover loss of data, though. They'll replace that 500GB hard drive full of all your photos/videos/purchased-music with
Hopefully someone would have the immediate necessities of life taken care of before they'd start to worry about data backups, but that doesn't mean that there's not
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Lots of people don't have access to or don't know how to upload something to an FTP site. This will resolve that issue for when someone wants to give you a file >10MB (which causes email headaches)
Hah (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:FTP (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
SFTP over SSH requires an ACK per block sent, greatly slowing it down. FTP is 5-10x faster in transferring files, and that has nothing to do with crypto overhead. SCP's method is great if you're on a noisy 2400 baud dial-up connection, but a total waste if you're using a modern, noise-free connection.
SCP was designed for individual file transfers, not bulk transfers. It can be hacked to do multi-file transfers, etc. but it really is a kludge.
FTP thru SSL/TLS is an excellent -- and much
Re: (Score:2)
IMO.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Backup is still the big one. I ke
Re: (Score:2)
I would think that uptime shouldn't be a major problem, but use for warez could really affect this. As far as always carrying data with you, there's problems wi
"LiveDrive"? How creative. (Score:2, Informative)
Another company already has a computer related product called "LiveDrive". It's a bank of front-panel audio receptacles for Creative sound cards, all in one 5.25" drive bay [creative.com].
Well someone was going to (Score:2)
Notice the "!", the two are totally different.
It depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, you might not trust Microsoft or Google with your data even if it is encrypted. If you are in a competing business, you wouldn't want to store your business data on their servers. Alternatively, you may not trust them to provide you with the level of availability you desire. It doesn't help you if you can't access your data when you want it.
If you have a few hundred GB of data, you aren't going to want online storage. To access your data is going to take too much time. Even with decent bandwidth, anything more than a couple GB is going to give some serious delay. If you want to access the data at your grandparent's house and they use dial-up, online isn't an option.
Finally, if I am not comfortable with the online option, or I'm not comfortable with keeping my data in a single physical location, I'm not going to choose those options. Personally, I like having it on physical media that I can carry around. I like the bandwidth I get from a USB device and I don't have to worry about getting an online volume properly mounted.
On a side note, I don't trust the idea of "free" or even "cheap" online storage. The money for the hardware, bandwidth and administration have to come from somewhere. If I'm not paying for it directly, where is the money coming from? Either the company is getting some benefit from it - such as Google analyzing it for keywords to target advertising, or they are selling some sort of information about my data, or they are making it up in indirect costs (add $25 to the price of Vista). I would rather pay the direct costs so I know how much it is costing me; but that may be personal preference.
Re:It depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a few hundred GB of data, you aren't going to want online storage.
I have a few hundred GB of data, and I want online storage. Why? Backups. For actual use, I'll have all my data stored locally, but what if my machine dies/house burns down, etc.? I'd love to have an online service I can use to store backups. If I lose my local copy for some reason, I won't care if it takes a while to restore it, I'll just be glad I *can* restore it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the mid 1990's, Newt Gingrich worried about people having an "Information Superhighway" in, but a footpath out. Thanks to today's asymmetric providers, this prediction has come true.
In fact, a switch to higher upstream bandwidth now has a new opponent: the content industry -- l
Re: (Score:2)
But, most people are limited by low upstream bandwidth. For example, my computer has about 400GB on it. At an upspeed rate of 512 kb/s, this will take 72 days to transmit, excluding network overhead, errors and so on.
Mine is even lower than that, but I don't care if it takes six months to upload it. I'm setting up something so I can back up to a machine at my brother's house, and I plan to use rsync with the bandwidth limit set to 20KBps and let it take several months to upload.
As long as new data gro
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why don't you just copy it locally and *then* take/ship/whatever the machine to your brother's house. That way it won't take months to upload the initial data, and the incremental changes should move much more quickly over the internet.
Incidentially, what you're doing is exactly what I did also. But I got my work place to pay for the hardware because I'm doing a
Re: (Score:2)
why don't you just copy it locally and *then* take/ship/whatever the machine to your brother's house.
I could. I may. For the moment it's more convenient just to copy it over the net.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably you wouldn't be shuttling hundreds of GB through a local application on a browser-like interface.
Years ago I dealt with large datasets from supercomputers that we wanted to visualize. We were very careful about insuring the big I/O traffic tasks happened where B/W was good (on the same machine that had the big disks, for example).
It does bring up an additional consi
unlimited (Score:1)
Where can I get a USB disk with unlimited storage? I use some web space for long term files I could need to access when I don't have the space, or when I forget my fob.
OSS package to provide this type of service? (Score:2)
Re:OSS package to provide this type of service? (Score:5, Informative)
It does have a lot of other requirements though, such as an LDAP server for accounts, Apache to serve the HTTP and WebDAV pages, Apache Tomcat for the JSP interface and proftpd if you want FTP access. However, it is pretty sweet once its running.
If thats too complicated, you may be better off just making WebDAV shares individually for different groups. Personally I like that with vtfileman, people can set up their own accounts with little to know interaction with the system administrator.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Online v. Offline systems. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet flash drives are comming down in price?
I mean, why would you need to waste bandwidth (which as noted can be expensive in some civilized nations) to pull in and work on files, when you can plug in a USB thumb drive with all your files in, or that spare 20 gig 2.5" drive, or a portable 3.5" drive, and work off of that? There are already distros out there that will boot off of USB drives. Why bother getting online when you don't need to be? What if you can't get online (no Wifi hotspot in the Nevada desert, and you forgot your EVDO card, plus Iridium is too expensive)?
Forget the Internet. Let's build up the Sneakernet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"The dog ate my homework." Seriously. You need a backup plan to protect your data from simple stupidity, ordinary household accidents, and disasters like Katrina. Media-rated fire safes are expensive.
I can see potential uses (Score:2, Insightful)
By far not the first of its kind (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Unlimited Storage, eh? (Score:1)
Free services already exist (Score:1, Informative)
I like services like this since it give me another option for backups. if something were to happen to my residence..say a hurrican or earthquake then my drives would be lost. at least i have an off-site sourc
Local machine should just be a cache (Score:5, Interesting)
Back up should be a server responsibility, not a client responsibility. The client should be responsible for passing data/documents through to the *real* storage location ASAP (ideally, as the data is entered into the client). This wouldn't be considered backup any more than saving from RAM to a disk file now is considered backup. Saving to the server should just be "saving". And pros keep the server backed up, of course.
Since before long all of us will have multiple networked clients capable of serious work (our old laptop, our new laptop, our phone, etc.) and we'll want to be able to move transparently from device to device and keep working, and not lose data when we lose hardware, having our "one place" for data be a server somewhere, with the clients functioning as local caches, seems the natural way to go.
Whoever gets the usability right ought to have a huge hit on their hands. Will it be Microsoft, with their control over such a high percentage of "serious" client OSes? It would make sense to build this in as a transparent feature of every PC/device OS from MS, increasing the attractiveness of MS OSes on devices if that's what you use on your PC. Or will it be Google, with their openness to all clients, regardless of vendor?
Or will they miss the local cache idea altogether and just create an offsite network drive?
About time (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
MIcosoft is the company consumers will look to for a nicely integrated, on-stop, solution.
Bundle a generous amount of off-line storage into the Windows Live! security package. Sell it for $50 a year with a three-seat license for home use. Profit.
There already is free online storage (Score:2, Informative)
Backups (Score:1)
Why wait? (Score:1)
Apple's iDisk online storage (Score:2)
I'm happy to see Microsoft providing competition in this area. I am a subscriber of Apple ".mac" with iDisk, providing 1 gig of online storage. I must say, I'm rather disapointed to the service, it just doesn't make sense when compared to the price tag. I'm pseudo locked-in by the
MS LiveDrive vs. Palm LiveDrive... (Score:2)
Re:MS LiveDrive vs. Palm LiFeDrive... (Score:2)
K-OS Switch? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that I see this in writing, I have a few hundred extra alarm bells going off. Still, is something like that even remotely feasible?
The next step: (Score:2)
think Virtual Machine.
Also, why not use all 3, in a RAID-style configuration?
If you lose access to any one, the other two would let you rebuild important data. While at the same time no single one has access to your data.
(the three being Google, Live, and a USB device; with parity data rotated very frequently, and the file being encrypted, so even the 2/3 data + 1/3 parity they have would be useless.)
The Big Issue is Trust (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you rather trust..the borg collective or Google? Data is important...you don't want to just hand it over to anyone...
Left with the choice between the guys who bring you blue screens or the flawlessly functioning GMAIL...
Well, I guess you know where I'll be leaving my data.
2 cents,
QueenB
Where did your data go today? (Score:2)
Uh huh. I'm sure there won't be any security issues here...
X-Drive (Score:2)
X-Drive failed as a business model. It allowed you to create virtual (X:) drive in Win '95 ten years ago.
I know, I know... "It'll be different this time."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)