Best Online Storage – Five of the best reviewed and compared

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Summary Comparison table

Provider	Free Account	Paid Account	Additional Offers
Humyo Business	Yes 10 GB	$4.95 for 25GB per User (approx £3.50 p/m)	30 Day Free Trial
Humyo Home	Yes 10 GB	$4.95 for 100 GB(approx £3.50 p/m)	14 day Free Trial
Mozy	Yes	$4.95 for unlimited space (approx £3.50 p/m)	extra 265MBper referral
liveDrive	No	$4.50 for 100 GBOR $10 for unlimited data and multiple PC's (approx £39.95 and £89.95)	30 day free trial
Box.net	Yes, 1 GB	$7.95 for 5GB £5.55	14 day free trial
Drop Box	Yes 2 GB	$9.99 (37.14) for 50Gb	extra 250 Mbper referral
iDrive	Yes 2 GB	$4.95 p/m for 150 GB
GmailDrive (unsupported)	Yes varies	Yes

Update: Due to popular demand in the comments we have also reviewed DropBox Storage here.

Welcome to a review of five on-line storage solutions that are on offer today on the net. I have chosen them because if you type, “on-line storage” into Google, these are the ones that take up the top spaces.  I have also chosen a sneaky gdrive too which may be of interest if you like using existing technologies like gmail creatively. Read on for more…

Mozy

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, lets look into the first offering from Mozy. With the free account you are entitled to 2GB of storage, and with the referral scheme, for every person that uploads their data, you and the referred, get an extra 256MB of disk space. They assure us in the blurb, they have powerful computers that can multiply by 256! You can also pay roughly £3.50 per month for unlimited space. Mozy has a client that sits on your computer. And after you sign up to Mozy, you are invited to download the client, and set it up.

Once you put in your username and password, that is e-mailed after sign-up, you go on to choose what you want to back up.

Simply check the boxes that you wish to back up, and click next. Now, the Achilles heal of all these programs is your upstream bandwidth. The line I was using was supposed to be 512kbps, which is pretty pretty good, however…

Well, the initial backup is always going to take a while, so don’t be put off. The client disappears into the system tray, and you don’t notice that it’s happening. Still, three hours for under 200 meg is a while, and if I wanted to back up my main computer at 200 MB every 3 hours, well you can apply the maths.

Once the upload is done, that’s it, further backups will take a much shorter time. You can now repeat this process on as many machines as you like, as long as your storage limit holds out. Also, to restore data, the time it takes should be much quicker than the  upload.

Here is where the benefit of an installed client comes into it’s own. If you right click on your client in the taskbar, you then get access to a host of options. You can select your own files to backup, select a schedule to backup, and a myriad of other options to tinker with.

To restore your files, you have several options as well. With the client installed, a new drive appears in “My Computer”, you can simply drag and  drop. You can right click on a file that needs to be restored, and choose restore, going back to a previous version. Or, you can backup from the web

Finally for Mozy, the website is set out well, and as far as ease of use is concerned, it very user friendly. There is a choice of encryption on the server, so all files will be safe from prying eyes.

Usability: 7/10 Features: 8/10 Website: 7/10 Value of Money 8/10

Overall: 8/10

Humyo

Humyo is the next one I would like to write about, although I signed up for 123-drive powered by Humyo. I later tried to sign up for Humyo, and was told I already had an account, so I will treat them the same.

Again, this offering is completely free, and for no investment, you get 10GB of disk space, oddly split into two 5GB partitions. One for media files, and one for your other files. With an investment of £3.99 per month you can upgrade to 100GB.

The site uses a Java drag and drop to upload your files, the Java client has the advantage of not needing to be installed, and already working on many devices. Once you sign up, you see a quickly fathomable website that benefits from a simple interface.

If you chose not to run with Java, there is the option of a standard upload. This is a pop-up that lets you select files you would like to backup.

You can also use the Java drag and drop.

Once the files have been uploaded, they appear in the main window. From here you have some nice options that appear to be missing from the previous offering, you can share your files and folders with one another. There is a space for your files, a “Teamspaces” folder, and an “Other People’s Files” folder. All of this means you can make collaboration easy. Or simply share your holiday photos with the folks.

There is an inbuilt ability to view photos and video from within the browser, great for taking huge amounts of photos, and boring your mates with on their own computer. If you fancy splashing the cash with a business account, you also get a snap shot capability. The encryption used is 256bit, more than enough. They also boast that the servers are held in an old Bank of England vault, so physical security should not be a problem. Although it does leave me wondering why it’s ex-Bank of England if it’s so secure?

Overall, Humyo is a decent offering that allows many devices to share data due to the Java client. It also offers 10GB for free! Can’t be bad.

Usability: 8/10 Features: 6/10 Website: 7/10 Value for money: 8/10

Overall: 7/10

Livedrive

The first of the non-free offerings is Livedrive. This service is £39.95 a year which works out at about £3.40 a month. With Livedrive, you get either a Java drag and drop upload, or you can download the client. The client is easy to install, but you do need the .Net framework 1.1. You get 100GB on the standard account, and unlimited with the pro account.

Then, once installed, you get both the Livedrive conrol panel, and an L: drive. The L: drive works just like an internal drive in your computer, you can simply drag and drop files in and out.

The control panel lets you configure quite a few options, I will mention just the main ones. First is bandwidth throttling that makes sure the app does not squeeze out any other important services running over your line, a very useful feature. You can also configure the off-line file settings. You can allow Livedrive to store your files on a cache for off line browsing, and to speed things up a bit if you have a slow line. You can also configure exceptions to files you don’t want cached. Certain documents can also be given priority when uploading and downloading, so that word document you have been slaving over will be backed up first.

For all the files you have uploaded, there is either a web editor, or viewer depending on what you are looking at. You can also manage your Facebook photos with the built-in Facebook application. There will also be support for all your mobile devices soon, including iPhones and Blackberrys.

The website looks polished, and the file structure view will be familiar to anyone who has used a computer. There is also a section for files that have been shared with you. Collaboration just being given the nod.

A fully featured offering that gives you all options the free ones do, but at a price.

Usability: 8/10 Features: 8/10 Website: 7/10 Value for money: 6/10

Overall: 7/10

Box.net

UPDATE: The folkes at box.net have been on to us regarding their accounts. Apparently they do offer a 1GB lite account with a 25MB upload limit. Hope this clears things up.

The next on-line storage solution is again one that offers no free disk space, although for £5.55 per month, you get 5GB at your disposal. The site has no client, and upload is driven either by Flash or Ajax, the decision can be made in the settings.

The web page you are confronted with is good and simple. Moving your cursor over the picture files gives you a small preview which is good. Not the same for video files though. Clicking on the arrow to the right, then gives you a list of options partly depending on the content. As you would expect, the usual suspects are there, delete, properties, rename. And a few you may not expect, Send with Gmail, Version History, and invite collaborators.

A really nice feature of Box is the option to create on-line documents. At the moment, this seems limited to a Word type document called a webdoc. You also seem to be unable to edit it in any other way apart from a browser. The good news is you can get people to read it or write on it simply by sharing it on the web, or by sending whomever an e-mail containing the link.

As well as the document pages, you can create discussion threads, and add bookmarks, and they all live on your front page within easy access. With the documents, you also have a revision history, so when the cat jumps over your keyboard and manages to save it, you can go back to a pre-catted version. Don’t be too disheartened by the lack of office compatibility though, because Box has a few tricks up it’s sleeve. If you go to the OpenBox link you find a whole host of applications that you can add that offer so many options. There are apps for opening MS Word documents, apps for PDFs, Excel files, Powerpoints, and Open Office documents. There are apps for Facebook, image editing, and even faxing. In fact there is so much here you could accomplish almost any office task with Box alone.

Box offers a lot more than the other three in terms of connectivity and compatibility with the office, and is obviously aimed more at collaboration. Usability: 8/10 Features: 9/10 Website: 8/10 Value for money: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

Gmail

My last option is not only free, but if you have a Gmail account, you are already half way there. If you know this trick, then you are aware that there are a few limitations. For example, you can only upload files of up to 10MB, and the client will only work on XP, but once your file are uploaded, you will be able to get you files from anywhere you can access your Gmail account.

Once you have installed the client, click on the drive object that appears in “My Computer”, and enter your details into the dialog. Once connected, you can drag and drop files into your drive. These files will then appear in your Gmail inbox. Simple!

If you decide to go this route, realise that this is not supported by Google, so one day, the party could be over on a whim. Now your data is there, you can view your pictures, send them on, or download them to a computer. Although this option is cheap, it does have some fairly big limitations. And be aware, it could stop at any time. Usability: 6/10 Features: 4/10 Website: 6/10 Value for money: 8/10

Overall: 6/10

Data Backup Technology

Worth a mention, though I’m afraid I was unable to test it, is Backup-technology. This site is for the business end of online data storage, that would like to entrust their backup regime to a company that can offer instant off-site backup.

They can offer on-line backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity, all through the virtue of an off-site backup solution. If, heaven help us, your company headquarters became the towering inferno, could you say that all your tapes would be safe? Your servers in a fireproof enviroment? Quite a few people would probably say no, simply because the resources are not there.

Imagine then a sinario whereby if the worst did happen, then you could relocate, and restore all your data to your temporary offices, and away you go. Better still, the responsibility for the backed up data is in someone elses hands. Belive me, the IT team will have enough to do, and the benefit of someone else restoring your data will be a god send.

They can also offer a hot E-mail backup, and virtual server backup. Invaluable resources if yo work in the corporate sector. My worst nightmare is loosing exchange. The idea that we can fail over to a working copy makes me feel a lot more easy. E-mail scares are the worst!

As I say this option may not be for the every day user, but those of us who work in IT may well benefit from one of these solutions, and who knows, maybe, if your data is that important, give them a call. Never costs to get a quote.

Hopefully you now have a better idea of what is on offer out there, and as ever, the rule of thumb seems to be you get what you pay for.  I have to say that all of the offerings have something to offer, and to a degree, are tailored for different needs. If it were me I think I could live with Mozy. However, if I needed the office anywhere features, you could not do better than Box.