ElephantDrive UNLIMITED online backup!

[sleepysurf]

I've had a number of hard disc failures in my household this year, including my 500 GB WD MyBook, which I was using to back up my FLAC files. Given the falling prices for ONLINE storage, I decided to research what's currently available. Some newer services advertise "unlimited" storage, at a reasonable price, but few include NAS devices in those plans. One that does is ElephantDrive.com, which offers unlimited backups for only $50/yr, and also supports mapped NAS devices in Windows (presumably with MacOSX as well). They also offer a license for up to FOUR household computers, which runs only $100/yr! I signed up for a trial, and although it's not the most intuitive setup, once you configure the custom options, it seems to work well with my mapped BuffaloTech Linkstation. Individual files sizes are limited to <5 GB, but that won't be a problem with FLAC files. If anybody else is looking for an inexpensive, and (seemingly) reliable online backup solution, check out www.elephantdrive.com BTW, they use Amazon's S3 servers for storage, with decent encryption, so they seem to have a robust infrastructure.

 

[Audiophiliac]

Interesting.

 

[amey01]

Now - if only I had the internet speed to make uploading my entire FLAC/ALAC collection feasible!!

 

[sleepysurf]

Just an update... I've had ElephantDrive running for 2 days now. The first day the program hung up after a few hours, and I had to start all over again yesterday. I suspect that was caused by an automatic MS Windows update which apparently started simultaneously. My uploads continued last night, but even with my FiOS Internet, it's slow going, taking an avg of 3-5 mins per FLAC track to upload. At this rate, it will take a couple weeks to get my 350+ (thus far ripped) CD's backed up. However, once that initial backup is completed, adding additional rips should be painless. For $50/yr, it's a no-brainer to go this route!

 

[sleepysurf]

FYI, after my computer kept locking up when Elephant Drive was running, I finally figured out I needed to rachet down the speed vs. computer resources slider (which comes up during the initial setup). Since doing so, it's been running smoothly in the background while still leaving me adequate resources for my usual computer processes (including running SqueezeCenter, which is another resource hog). Of note, the Basic Home version limits your uploading to 100 GB/month, so it will take a few months to get my entire backup online. However, once done, the monthly upload quota won't be a problem. I suspect they limit downloads/restores in a similar manner, so if you lose your primary storage, it will still take some time to fully restore it. However, I'm not particularly concerned by that, as long as I can eventually get it. At this point, I'm impressed enough with the trial that I went ahead and paid the annual fee.

 

[sleepysurf]

Another f/u. I've been using ElephantDrive backup for almost 4 months now. Turns out the prior slowness of backups was due to my BuffaloTech Linkstation NAS going bad. I've temporarily switched to a USB external hard drive for FLAC storage, and the backups are a LOT faster now, averaging ~25 GB/day.