ElephantDrive

My initial installation of the software automatically set the upload speed to "MAX" (vs. computer resources), and constantly locked up my Win XP laptop. After a reinstall, I manually set it to use less memory/resources, and it's been plugging away silently in the background ever since. A MAJOR advantage of ElephantDrive over the competition, is that it allows you to back up files on a NAS or external hard drive (as long as it's a mapped network drive in Windows). That feature, plus the very reasonable annual fee, makes it the most compelling value today for online backup.

I've been trying to backup 50GBs for over two weeks (PC on continuously). My PC has shut down and/or blue screened multiple times. The last time it lost nearly 20GBs of backup - Customer support was initially responsive but they have provided no solutions and haven't responded to my most recent emails. I'm about to pull the plug on this fiasco. Great concept - terrible/failed execution (so far). Maybe okay for someone with less than 10 GBs to be backed up.

First off, a disclaimer: I work at ElephantDrive and have an interest in its success. That said, I just spent a great deal of time testing the latest release and have some review-worthy commentary. I'm very excited at the latest round of testing we've done with regard to upload speeds. The improvements we have made in the latest version of the ElephantDesktop software have made it faster to upload to ElephantDrive than to S3 directly. Also, the recently launched Secure Sharing Service let's you easily move large files from place to place, announced recently here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/10/prweb557414.htm.

The download was quick, setup was simple, and the backup was startlingly fast. I was also really impressed with the transparency of the copy on their website, concerning their security setup. The price is reasonable, and I'm really pleased with the whole package.

I was looking for a site to store (not back up) my files as they are about to fill up my hard drives. I looked at a lot of options and was not impressed. Sites like Mozy and Carbonite are "back-up" only sites -- if I delete it from my hard drive, it only sticks around 30 days on their site and then it is wiped. Other sites offer permanent storage but are extremely expensive or require a lot of hands-on maintenance. ElephantDrive seems to offer an excellent balance of price, flexibility and ease-of-use. The ElephantDrive desktop installed quickly and cleanly on both of my Windows XP computers and is very easy to learn to use. I was backing up my first files within 5 minutes of installing. On my hardwired DSL connection, it backups around 5-6 gigs an hour and I can still surf, download and use other internet applications with no loss in speed that I can detect. From what I've read of Mozy reviews, it only backs up at around 1G an hour. You can either set the application to run regular backups a la Mozy or just store the files, delete them from your local drives if necessary and never touch them again until you need them. Files are encrypted using ElephantDrive keys or personal keys. I like the fact that they use the Amazon S3 service for their back-end service -- from what I've read on the S3 site, their architecture is designed to stay reliable even with regular hard drive failures. Most of the day they have on-line instant support if you need it. When on-line support is not available, you can generate a standard support ticket. Storage is unlimited for $99/year with a 100G upload limit per month -- plenty for my needs and most consumers I'd suspect. Like I said, I haven't seen a site that comes close to matching their features for the price. In fact, I've seen some sites that charge upwards of $2000/yr for only 500G of storage. I suspect that ElephantDrive will become a major competitor in the online storage market. They have designed an excellent product in a market that is going to explode as people need more and more off-site storage.

I found ElephantDrive when it was still in beta. The service has come a long way and now I actually think it's pretty good — I'm using it for my music and all my business docs and it just works. It's also how I found out about S3. While I think S3 is pretty cool, I'm glad these guys made a program that is easy for a regular person to use, especially since I recently had a total hard drive flameout. Thumbs up and thanks for saving my data.

Much simpler and cheaper ways of doing the same thing. And most importantly -- way better ways to make sure your important data doesn't full into just any bodies hands. look elsewhere....

Windoze only. Mac/Linux clients are not here yet. Downloaded the windoze client for XP. It would not install - demanded the lates .NET framework download. Moved on to JungleDisk, much better and works on multiple platforms - today.

Whilst still in Beta, this product appears very promising. I'm currently running a backup of a large portion of my home XP machine's "My Documents" tree. Going is slow (bandwidth limitation on my cable connection) but as I'm about to head on vacation for a week :) it's not an issue - it can keep grinding away. My only complaint is that when ElephantDrive encounters a file that's larger than the 5GB limit, it pops up a dialog box and stops the backup from proceeding until the user clears the dialog box. Hopefully I've weeded out all the large filesso that I'll have no more stoppages. I won't have any Internet access on the beach :) so I can't clear the box if it hooks up after I leave. More stars will be added when I see how it's done with some restores.