Cloud Storage/ online backup

Hi I have a small studio running three computers and was curious if anyone had experience of using cloud services for a harddrive? I would like to put all my job folders in the cloud and be able to access them drag them to the local computer then place thm back on the cloud when done? Any recomendations?

Thanks!

What size if files will you be pushing back and forth, and how often? Also how much storage space do you think you’ll need?

Thats a good question Chris, I do heavy solidworks assemblies and Keyshot files. I currently use crashplan for a background online data backup but its running on only one computer and i need to link 3 comps and it seems very pricey. Just curious how other are doing it.

Thanks!

We’ve been playing with both Dropbox and SkyDrive ( the larger GB paid versions ) and have had good luck with both so far - at your size/scale, they might work well. We’ve adjusted our perception to think of those as servers sitting in the corner instead of who-knows-where.

Dropbox obviously has a jump on SkyDrive but since we’re slowly switching to Win 8 I thought it pertinent to keep it in the running. Common access, organizing folders and sharing are all easy and straightforward so far.

Thanks everyone for the tips, very helpful!

What are your filesizes? And what sort of transfer speeds are you getting with your current internet connection?

Pushing a 1GB assembly/rendering to the cloud on a 3MB/sec upload connection could take hours…

That’s the primary reason we have a massive server with a back up server running daily backups instead of going to cloud based. Plus, we didn’t want the downtime of pulling everything off the cloud for a quick change, then putting it back on. WIth massive assemblies, unless you’re using something like Pack&Go or even PDM Works, it might get messy.

Thanks Chris good to know since I will be doing big assemblies most likely. Dont have the resources for some big server right now. Looking for some small scale efficient alternatives

You have a couple of options I think…

One is to purchase a NAS hard drive and plug it in your network - it’s as easy as it gets to set up a server. If you have gigabit ethernet or fast WiFi, it’s as fast as pulling files off a USB drive. I have a western digital and I can access it remotely in case someone needs a file too. I think you can sync it to the cloud but I’ve never done it

for full-on cloud storage, there are two I use that are pretty nice… SugarSync and AeroFS. Sugarsync costs $50 a year for 30GB - cheaper than DropBox and you can sync any folder, not just the one’s in the "dropbox’ folder… stuff like your "my music’ or “my pictures” folder

AeroFS another is another cloud/share folder but it doesn’t really store anything in the cloud, just on your different computers themselves. Because of that you get unlimited storage. You can access the files remotely and only have to worry about filling up your hard drive

Skydrive is cool but it seems like it’s more for mobile devices than computer share drives. Google Drive is the same in my mind. Dropbox is great but it’s expensive and you can only share one folder (the dropbox folder).

We needed about 3 TB of storage space, and at that rate the monthly cost alone was more than the monthly finance cost of a new server and backup solution.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Being such a small startup makes it difficult to choose the best service that is simple and economical.

We have been using Dropbox, JustCloud and SugarSync to cater all our storage and online backup needs. These are good in free and as well as in paid versions. Crashplan is good but it is limited to backup only and most of the companies and people prefer to use such kind of a service that can give them both backup and storage selections to upload and share their data onto the cloud network.

Apart from the aforesaid cloud vendors, you can google several others, or, can check the source link to find some more alternatives in the domain of online backup services.

Source: http://www.cloudreviews.com/blog/best-online-backup

Thanks for the tip!