Cloud Boxes

January 3rd, 2012

A few months ago I signed up to Box.net — now called Box — during their iOS 50gb promotion, I and many others received 50gb of free storage, forever, in exchange for signing up using their iPhone app.

I was really impressed with the promotion – if you compare it to Dropbox’s free 2gb account or SugarSync’s 5gb then it’s miles out in front. But comparing Box to either Dropbox or SugarSync is a little unfair, as their services are a slightly different. Box doesnt sync your files to and from your desktop, so your files are very much “up in the cloud”, it does have file and folder sharing so you’re able to use it as a collaboration tool, along the same lines as the other two services.

I’m already a big fan of Dropbox and through their referral scheme I’ve increased my account up to nearly 5gb – and I’m not exactly running out of space. So I wasnt looking to jump ship. One place that I am running out of space on is my MacBook Pro, I’ve got a 250gb harddrive and it’s 90% full. Many files are old and no longer needed, but important enough not to be just deleted. Unfortunately Bitcasa is still in invite only beta, so I’ve had to start having a sort out, these unused files are being packed up and transferred to the digital attic they call the cloud. The files are mainly old work projects, the jobs are finished – many are more than two or three years old, so if I haven’t accessed the files recently – it’s a good assumption I shouldn’t need to again in the near future. And they dont need to be immediately available, on the end of an Internet connection and a short download is fine.

The only stumbling block I’ve found with Box is that they have a 100mb individual file size limit, which has caught me out a couple of times. I was zipping and compressing large folders of similar files – so I only needed to upload one zip file instead of 300 plus photos for example, but this was creating zip files much bigger than 100mb, so those smaller files have all been uploaded individually. Another 100mb plus scenario is the large, multi-layered Phoroshop file – these have either been zipped up to get under the 100mb limit, or if that didnt work, flattened and saved – not ideal, but still better than just deleting the file altogether.

So far I’ve managed to clear about 12gb from my laptop — not bad — and I’m not finished yet.

I previously placed these old files on external USB drives, but that’s not ideal, they’re not 100% fault proof and you’d have to have two of everything to create a back up of the archive. This way I’ve got a secure, offsite archive for my old files, one that definitely won’t get lost in a house move! My only problem will be when I run out of space on my free account, will it be a service worth paying for I wonder?

Tags: archives, backup, box, box.net, cloud storage