Hey, what do you guys use for cloud backup/storage?

[Gazella]

I use Dropbox.

Never heard of Copy. And I don't know anyone who uses it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Although I'm still leaning toward going with Copy because Dropbox's free 2GB would get snarfed up in a second. Nobody has said anything about iDrive so it seems you're not impressed with that. And we know that if you give data to Hitch for safekeeping it would be impossible for it to be lost. (Hitch, could I use you instead of a cloud drive?)

No, but you'd be AMAZED at the number of clients who do. I get emails and calls fairly regularly, looking for everything from an ePUB we did 4 years ago to, I s**t thee not, "do you have that original manuscript I gave you for the book we did in 2010, to make the ebook from?" Seriously. The horrible part is, yes, I usually do have them. I did have to reach out to a cover designer recently, though, to get new honker-sized copies of some covers he'd done for a client for iBooks intake. (Not that it was really "our" job, per se, but, hey...)

Does anybody know what Copy's maximum file upload size is? And does anybody know if Dropbox or Copy is easier to use, especially regarding syncing files?

Honestly, before today--and I'm a technogeek of the first water when it comes to software, SAS, cloud-stuff, etc.--I'd never even HEARD of Copy, and I don't know anyone who uses it. Y'know, Gregg, really--why not just use Copy and a thumb? That should get you there. What I do is pretty psycho, and I'm the first to admit it, but I'm dealing with other people's stuff here, and secured/encrypted/you-name-it IP. As long as you back up to a Thumbdrive, religiously, I don't see why you have to burden yourself looking for Enterprise-level solutions; Copy or SugarSynch or whomever seems fine. Or pay a few shekels, go crazy, and get S3 Storage at Amazon. It's not that expensive. (And let's not ignore GoogleDrive). OR, you could go wild and crazy and use your Amazon Prime free web storage--don't forget that wee (quasi-)freebie. ;-)

Hitch

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Dropbox seems like the best. Copy.com is a close second but hasn't been around all that long and doesn't have all the features Dropbox has. (I like Dropbox's ability to recover deleted files.) Although I'm still leaning toward going with Copy because Dropbox's free 2GB would get snarfed up in a second. Nobody has said anything about iDrive so it seems you're not impressed with that. And we know that if you give data to Hitch for safekeeping it would be impossible for it to be lost. (Hitch, could I use you instead of a cloud drive?)

Does anybody know what Copy's maximum file upload size is? And does anybody know if Dropbox or Copy is easier to use, especially regarding syncing files?

Copy.com is an offering of Barracuda Networks which has been around a long time (since 2003). The Copy.com product I think is 1-2 years old, but the company is much older then DropBox.

Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda_Networks

Barracuda Networks, Inc. is a company providing security, networking and storage products based on network appliances and cloud services. The company’s security products include products for protection against email, web surfing, web hackers and instant messaging threats such as spam, spyware, trojans, and viruses. The company's networking and storage products include web filtering, load balancing, application delivery controllers, message archiving, NG firewalls, backup services and data protection.

This is not some new fly by night player in this space.

And you can recover deleted files:
https://copy.zendesk.com/entries/240...deleted-files-

As for max upload size, I have uploaded multi-gig files and not had any problems, but I have not looked to see if there actually is a limit.

Seriously - it has identical offering in features to DropBox. It is exactly as easy to use - because it works the same way.

As I have mentioned, I have DropBox also - 18gb worth of free space there built 500meg at a time. I think its a great service, and it was the best choice until Copy.com came out. Now I think they are second best, but only really lose cause they are stingy on space.

[eschwartz]

I still prefer DropBox since Copy doesn't seem as fast. The CLI stinks, too.

While Copy technically offers everything Dropbox does and more, Dropbox Just Works and Copy Just Doesn't.

I recently shared some Purim videos from scjool, on both Dropbox and Copy. Copy took much longer to upload/download, and the files were shared with me by the guy who took the videos. So I moved them from his folder to a subfolder of last years stuff, easy.

I used Mover to import them into Copy, and added the one 3GB video to that folder. (It wasn't in the Dropbox share because of the size.) Or tried to, then discovered Copy has no utility for moving files in the web interface. I had to download my Copy account and move it from the filesystem. Copy took several hours downloading and uploading the file, since aparently they couldn't figure out I moved it -- they seemed to treat it as a deleted and new file. On that note, this is factoring out the several hours it took for Copy to delete the local copy of the other 2.5 GB of videos I copied from my Dropbox synced folder. I had hoped to speed up the preliminary downloading. I am pretty sure Dropbox is much much much faster at matching files to save time. Then again, they know what they're doing.

Look, I'm sure once the files are there and everything is set up it doesn't really matter who's servers are storing them... long-term dumb storage would seem to be Copy's niche...

Copy has no polish. I signed up when they first came out and took a look, but their interface was retarded, so I'm happy that at least this time around they have finally optimized their website so it doesn't take five minutes to load the damn login page...

[VydorScope]

eschwartz,

My experiences with them differ then yours, in about every way. I just pushed 5gb of data to them last night and it went just as fast as Dropbox ever did.

Glad DropBox is working for you! That is the great thing about competition - don't like one company, go to the other.

[Penforhire]

Even though these services offer similar function they are not (yet) identical. One example -- Copy does not appear to offer the search functions (finding your own files without visually scanning directories) that Dropbox does.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Even though these services offer similar function they are not (yet) identical. One example -- Copy does not appear to offer the search functions (finding your own files without visually scanning directories) that Dropbox does.

OK, well, I have to say: if that's accurate (and I don't doubt Penforhire one iota), that's a definite deal killer for me. I must search DB's...jeeze, I don't even think I could count. I search them constantly, with myriad filters, everything from text + file type to partial text searches to "almost-kinda-maybe-this-was-that-file-name-that-I-can't-remember" searches. ;-)

But again: my need is moderately different than most folks.

Hitch

[VydorScope]

I would not know - I never have a need to search via their web site. If I need to search a file in either DropBox or Copy I would just use Finder on my mac and find it. I assume you windows peoples can do the same in Explorer.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I would not know - I never have a need to search via their web site. If I need to search a file in either DropBox or Copy I would just use Finder on my mac and find it. I assume you windows peoples can do the same in Explorer.

V:

We use the website search moderately often for recovering old, deleted, etc., files, particularly people who come back after 6 mos. or more. Normally, I use the Windows equivalent of "finder," which is the search function in Windows Explorer, but I'd miss the website search, for the reasons stated. Obviously, for the good folks on this thread, Y(their)MMV, as I've previously said, because our uses are different than the normal person's.

Hitch

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Hitch

V:

We use the website search moderately often for recovering old, deleted, etc., files, particularly people who come back after 6 mos. or more. Normally, I use the Windows equivalent of "finder," which is the search function in Windows Explorer, but I'd miss the website search, for the reasons stated. Obviously, for the good folks on this thread, Y(their)MMV, as I've previously said, because our uses are different than the normal person's.

Hitch

Yeah - if web search was important to mean and Copy did not have it, it would break the deal. The only time I log on to the web interface is to look up my referral URL - otherwise I just plan do not use it. Same is true with my DropBox account.

They both serve as offsite storage and machine syncing for me. For that I can not tell them apart. They both are fast and automagic.

[Gregg Bell]

Hitch, Thanks for the laughs. "do you have that original manuscript I gave you for the book we did in 2010, to make the ebook from?" Vincent, thanks for the information. Everybody, thanks for the feedback. Seems there's just so many choices out there. I'm much more like you Vincent in my needs. In fact, Hitch, your suggestion of a thumb drive is what I usually do and I've never had a problem. It just seems like since I've gone Linux, all these Linux guys are obssesed with backups. Backup. Backup. Backup! That's all you hear about in those Linux forums. And the choices! There's some French company (HubiC) (sic) https://hubic.com/en/ that gives you 25GB free! (And supposedly the French won't let the NSA spy on your stuff. So it's got that going for it. And they give you a year's supply of French bread.) (Nah, made that last bit up.)

[David Munch]

Originally Posted by mrmarlowe

Wonder how you got that much. I used to think that the most they offer by way of free referrals is 36 GB.

The Dropbox Space Race allowed up to 25Gb additional space for 2 years for people associated with education. Then there's the pseudo-annual DropQuest that gave 1Gb each year. Then there's the free stuff for everyone. And then of course referrals, which is limited to 16Gb!

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

It just seems like since I've gone Linux, all these Linux guys are obssesed with backups. Backup. Backup. Backup! That's all you hear about in those Linux forums.

Well... if you really want Linux backup solutions I think that the first Linux CDs that I ordered in '93 or '94 also included a CD with a backup program on it... if you want I could try to dig that up, I probably still have it.

[kyteflyer]

My take on it is this: if you want backups that can be automatically restored at your request... iDrive is great (I did use it for a while for things like my mac keychain etc). If you want sync, which will occur whenever you make the change on your computer... Dropbox. If you just want an utterly enormous space for storing stuff... Copy and Box.

I use all three. Havent been near Sugarsync in months so was surprised to see the earlier post saying freeloaders have been dropped. Saves me worrying about that then.

I only have ~8GB on Dropbox, I was late to the referral party, but I now have 380GB on Copy and 50GB on Box (special offer for IOS some time ago, they have them regularly). Heaps of space for storing things I want to keep. Oh yes, and I also have 27GB on Onedrive which I rarely use, its more for sharing I guess. Dropbox houses my calibre library, and a few app databases from my mac. Everything else goes to Copy and Box.

I'm not paying for any of this space. Its all free. How lucky can you get, eh?

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Well... if you really want Linux backup solutions I think that the first Linux CDs that I ordered in '93 or '94 also included a CD with a backup program on it... if you want I could try to dig that up, I probably still have it.

That's just the offer I've been waiting for! Who needs 50GB free storage when one can have CD backup programs from '93? (I knew the solution would present itself.)