What are people using for this nowadays? I'm usually a SpiderOak user, but unfortunately my account has got into one hell of a flap this morning (it seems that following a reinstallation yesterday, it's somehow synced an empty Documents folder over my full one at work so all my documents have vanished, and when I put them back in from a backup there's a couple of folders where SpiderOak just deletes the data as soon as I put it in) and since it's not the first time it's done this, I'm planning on moving. Dropbox is the obvious alternative but I know their privacy policy hasn't always been solid, they're not "zero-knowledge" like SpiderOak are, and there have been at least one breach of their security and theft of password data.

My main requirement is that it must be properly cross-platform, I use Windows, Linux and Mac (10.6) computers, sometimes headless so a command line version would also be ideal (which SpiderOak offers). Also it should be zero-knowledge if possible, there's nothing particularly private or incriminating in there but I'd rather not just hand over my data to US law enforcement whenever they feel like it as in general I don't agree with these invasions of privacy. So I'm open to other ideas depending what the currently fashionable service is

I work for a company that offers such a solution for business, but will drop you a PM about it rather than "sell" on here.

The major question I would put forward is what's the value of that data.

If low, then it's a none issue really whoever you use as long as it's up most of the time.

If the data has value then you're better off looking at a commercially supported tool.

What about something like http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan.html

Then you are in complete control of your data.

Realistically, it's the old combination of it being both worthless and priceless at the same time. It's personal data with no commercial value but in some cases immeasurable sentimental value (family photos etc) which are only going to increase in "value" to me as they become both reminders of my daughter's childhood when she's grown up and in some cases will be all that's left of older family members.

This is why I listed zero-knowledge as a bit of a secondary concern; as a technically minded person, I always liked the way that SpiderOak did things simply because they explained it all upfront and I could see that it was a secure solution compared to a lot of the competition. Ideally I wouldn't want to switch that for a product which just made vague claims about their data "being encrypted with SSL" which can only protect it in transit and not at rest, or who can decrypt my data without me being involved in the process (which Dropbox almost certainly used to be able to do). I know that my files have no commercial value but a third party could only find that out after they'd already snooped through them, so I'd rather use a service which simply doesn't allow this at all through using a secure implementation.

I would of suggested Dropbox, and you have considered it. It works for me but I treat anything I put anywhere as public.

The other alternative and it's definitely in the tech solution field.

Combine a few tools, Use S3(euro) for storage and rsync etc, for windows of course you'd need to drop something like cygwin in.

You could then encrypt before sending, if you mount the drive it maybe slower access, but less local storage too; handy for chromebook too.

One of the things I am looking at is trying to work in the cloud/remote, as much as the cloud is a marketing con, the idea of having my laptop nicked and loosing a few days productivity/email/everything is a painful one. In theory I could buy a laptop in any old fleapit and return to support/productivity...

It's actually not that bad to have nothing locally, ssh into a linux vm... some thoughts to ponder.

As I say I use dropbox, it works and is the most polished experience I've found, privacy and security aside.

I also use google drive, various vms and a bit of S3, and bluetac.

Yeah, I'm kind of trying to avoid building something myself too much. There are enough companies out there that I'm sure I can find another one which is "right for me" in the same way that SpiderOak is when it's working. Trouble is that there's a lot out there that I've never heard of but someone else might have, otherwise I just get the usual Dropbox/Skydrive responses. As you say, Dropbox is the most polished service, and I completely agree from that point of view. But their security implementation still allows their staff to decrypt my data without me being involved (unless I use a massive Truecrypt volume but then I lose the advantage of incremental uploads). As I say, I know there's nothing in there that's dodgy or even particularly private, but it's the principle of the thing. I don't feel totally comfortable with the lack of privacy, everything seems to be heading this way particularly in the US and no doubt the UK shortly, so I'd rather put my money into companies who can "do better" and still believe in being innocent until proven guilty, as it were.

Something like OwnCloud is another option, although I'd need to find somewhere to home it as my home Internet connection is too slow upload-wise to make it a pleasant experience I think. Maybe when I finally get FTTC in the area but until then, it may prove to be quite a limiting factor.

Well our company keeps everything in the UK and fully encrypted in flight and at rest, which we can't read.

The issue is going to be that it's a pay service and our smallest unit is 1TB.

Yeah, it's a bit OTT for me, and unfortunately doesn't address my wish for stuff being synced across multiple devices. Assuming proper de-duplication, my dataset is around 25GB, and it's obviously this use across multiple devices that helps me keep that down (i.e. all my photos total around 13GB, but when properly de-duped that's 13GB no matter how many devices I want to see them on/back them up from). I don't have a problem with paying a reasonable cost because as I say, to me (and eventually my daughter) these things are likely to become invaluable but I'd want to pay for the right product and yours is clearly designed around an enterprise environment with much larger storage needs than I have and a different usage model.

Correct me if this seems unfair, but you seem geared around a more traditional service to provide off-site backup and long-term archiving for a "single" machine (by which I mean a single service, it could be several clustered machines providing one share which is used by one/several people) rather than a home user with multiple devices who just wants their stuff to be available on several systems as well as having an off-site backup for last-resort scenarios.

The more I look around, the more it looks like SpiderOak is pretty the only off the shelf zero-knowledge backup system so far, everyone else seems to have caveats in their privacy policy.

Something like OwnCloud is another option, although I'd need to find somewhere to home it as my home Internet connection is too slow upload-wise to make it a pleasant experience I think. Maybe when I finally get FTTC in the area but until then, it may prove to be quite a limiting factor.

I demo'd OwnCloud at work for a while to see if it was a realistic option to stop our staff using dropbox for business related documents. In short, don't bother.. Its like its not finished!

Really? It's version 5.0 so I assumed it was fairly usable by now. Or have they succumbed to Chrome disease where virtually every code commit bumps the major version number?

Yeah, it's a bit OTT for me, and unfortunately doesn't address my wish for stuff being synced across multiple devices. Assuming proper de-duplication, my dataset is around 25GB, and it's obviously this use across multiple devices that helps me keep that down (i.e. all my photos total around 13GB, but when properly de-duped that's 13GB no matter how many devices I want to see them on/back them up from). I don't have a problem with paying a reasonable cost because as I say, to me (and eventually my daughter) these things are likely to become invaluable but I'd want to pay for the right product and yours is clearly designed around an enterprise environment with much larger storage needs than I have and a different usage model.

As I said, I didn't think it's an ideal fit.

Correct me if this seems unfair, but you seem geared around a more traditional service to provide off-site backup and long-term archiving for a "single" machine (by which I mean a single service, it could be several clustered machines providing one share which is used by one/several people) rather than a home user with multiple devices who just wants their stuff to be available on several systems as well as having an off-site backup for last-resort scenarios.

We can do multiple devices or enterprise environments, as we have a single global namespace and can break down to different users and devices.

Effectively we pump stuff through a gateway appliance or number of HA or globally located appliances and do a load of clever things to offer that guarantee.

I think it's fair to say though, it's more a business/enterprise than a solution for a home user wanting loads of devices and an assume it'll still there end kind of offering

Edited 29 April, 201313 yr by cheezemonkhai

Have you had a look at sugar sync?

Really? It's version 5.0 so I assumed it was fairly usable by now. Or have they succumbed to Chrome disease where virtually every code commit bumps the major version number?

It works, just don't expect anything anywhere near as slick as dropbox! I also found it quite slow and clunky.

I've had a quick look at SugarSync but not really tried it. It has no Linux client, sadly, which isn't a dealbreaker but would be nice to have. Like I said in reply to Colin above, there are so many of these type of services around at the moment that I don't see the point in limiting myself to a system that I know is missing a feature just yet when I almost certainly don't need to.

Given the lack of zero-knowledge, cross-platform alternatives, I think I might actually end up trying to work through it with SpiderOak support to be honest. There seems to be a distinct lack of actual competitors in this area even though it seems like zero-knowledge was quite a popular news/blog subject in the latter half of 2012.

I have my own 'cloud' haha

http://www.synology.com/products/product.php?product_name=DS212j〈=uk

I have my own 'cloud' haha

http://www.synology....=DS212j〈=uk

Can you publish your API then :p

I have my own 'cloud' haha

http://www.synology....=DS212j〈=uk

I don't see no cloud there I see a single point of failure

All joking aside, I do have a NAS/home server device which I could put OwnCloud or similar onto. But as has been said, it's a single point of failure, and doesn't give me off-site storage. Which I wasn't worried about too much cos there's always been a synced copy of my data on my work PC, but I'm leaving my current job soon so I may not be able to keep that going in the new place.

I've now sent a ticket in to the support team, erased all the data from my account and got it back to a clean slate (0 bytes stored, 0 current transactions, etc) and I'm going to give it another shot. It's paid for and there doesn't seem to be any products that match all the features, but it's going to be under very close scrutiny while I keep my eye open for a competitor.

Can you publish your API then :p

Yes.........................and your point is???

I don't see no cloud there I see a single point of failure

Please don't use double negatives,................it's SOOOO uneducated. :p , and TRY to use punctuation.

......watch out its the internet police.

PS - You might want to look at your sig. So uneducated to use multiple punctuations together :p

Edited 30 April, 201313 yr by Rob_Quads

Yes.........................and your point is???

Your 2 drive, low end processor equipped synology (They do ones with more CPU, but that one is aimed at the SOHO and home user market) is not a cloud storage offering.

It's a single device, two drive piece of network attached storage.

Unless you've installed a eucalyptus plugin (or similar) you don't have an API to write data to the device, you use CIFS/SMB or NFS or one of a few other protocols.

So what my point is, it that it's a home NAS, not a cloud service.

Edited 30 April, 201313 yr by cheezemonkhai

I'm using Google. Was using Dropbox until I heard none of its sent over https and then they'd had a back door breach or potential where the app could be used to gain full pc control. Was quite a while ago so might have changed now, but put me off.

Dropbox now uses SSL and 256-bit encryption on all transfers so its fairly secure.