[Hidden-tech] Music-video storage in the cloud

Roger Williams roger at qux.com
Tue May 18 10:08:38 EDT 2010


>>>>> Ron Miller <ronsmiller at comcast.net> writes:

  > I've just been looking into this and I think Mozy is a good choice.

Hmmm... as far as I can tell, Mozy is strictly an online backup service, and
the whole backup/restore process is handled by a proprietary client that runs
on individual PCs.  (The per-machine client part is almost inevitable, but
Mozy doesn't support anything but Windows and OSX.)  Of course its big win for
personal users is unlimited storage (for a single client) for a fixed price.

Unfortunately, there's no way to stream the backed up audio or video files
with your media player or Apple TV; no way to autonomously backup your local
NAS; in fact, no support for accessing your files in any way except through
their software on your PC.

An attractive option is ZumoDrive.  Like many other services, it uses the
Amazon S3 cloud.  However, it appears to be unique as compared to other file
sync and storage services in that content appears local to the filesystem and
can be streamed from the cloud on demand.  In addition to Windows and OSX
devices, they support Linux, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, WebOS, and various
network storage boxes.  Some additional interesting features include:

    "The ZumoDrive service also offers intelligent 'predictive caching' which
    allows copies of frequently used files to be stored locally so users can
    access these files when they don't have internet access.  ZumoDrive allows
    users to selectively synchronize individual files, folders, or the entire
    virtual drive. Users can also link folders in place on their computers to
    their ZumoDrive, and these folders and all content will stay in sync
    across all devices.  The ZumoDrive service allows storage-restricted
    devices (e.g. netbooks, iPhones, WebOS and Android handsets), to have full
    access to the cloud, thereby making these devices appear to be as large as
    there is data available in the cloud."

Alas, no "all you can eat" pricing option.

-- 
Roger Williams <roger at qux.com>
Chief Technical Officer, Qux Corporation
433 West Street, Suite 8, Amherst, MA 01002, USA
Tel +1 413 253-6400 * Fax +1 508 302-0230 * GSM +1 508 287-1420


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