The Rotten Word

Let me start off with an apology: I have been pushy recently about Dropbox and how useful it is, even posting referral links that will snag me (and whoever signs up using them) more free space. In fact, I still use Dropbox (I’ll explain how later in this post), and still love them. Bu their pricing models aren’t a good fit for me and they lack a few features I find are vital to any comprehensive cloud-based backup solution.

But that doesn’t mean I can just give up on the idea. After all, the recent news that Sidekick’s backup provider, Danger, Inc. (a subsidiary of Microsoft) almost lost all of their users’ data illustrates the importance of backup.

Click through to read why a combination of Dropbox, SpiderOak Backup, and Google Docs is the right solution for me, and why it may be for you, too.

Working And Playing With The Cloud

There are plenty of articles in the blogosphere about cloud computing, so I’m not going to go crazy describing it. I’ll say that cloud computing involves working with data, whether personal, professional, or creative, that is stored on a remote server, and accessed directly via the internet. Some popular examples include:

• Flickr: Photo editing, organization, and storage
• Box.net: Professional-grade file collaboration
• Evernote: Cross-platform note-taking solution, including optical character recognition and voice memos
• Google Docs: A Google offering that allows for creation, editing, conversion, and sharing of documents in popular formats like ODF, DOC, PPT, and XLS. Also includes a PDF view.

All of these include some form of folder and tagging organization, a sharing component, and web interface. Which makes sense, since they all want to replicate and improve upon, if not replace, the experience of manipulating files on a local hard drive.

I’m an avid Evernote user and I have a professional Flickr account (although I cop to no photo talent of any kind). But what I’m going to focus on in this post is Google Docs, because it has a few interesting connections to my backup “masterplan.”

Drawing Down The Moon Cloud

Google Docs is wonderful. I use it for letters, fiction, and even for law school. In fact, I like it so much that it is my primary repository of class notes and case briefs. Even without my trust 16gb Corsair Flash Voyager, I can hop on any internet connection and pull up my notes and my briefs for reference, editing, or collaboration. Google provides an amazing revision-tracking component that allows you to return to any one of potentially hundreds of versions of your document. Coupled with a simple autosave feature and a convenient folder structure, it gets the job done.

But my one complaint is that there is no integrated way to download your documents en masse. Yes, some can use the wonderful magic of Google Gears, but it has its limitations. For example, Linux integration is still buggy. And you can’t save everything to a flash drive. I needed a more robust option if I was going to stick with Docs.

And I found it in Google Docs: Download (GDD). Check out the site for the not-so-secret recipe to download your Docs. As far as I know, the browser version requires Firefox, but there is also a command line script for you nerds out there. GDD allows you to download all your Google Docs from your browser with the help of the DownloadThemAll and Greasemonkey addons.

So, once a week or so, I download all of my Google Docs onto the Dropbox folder on my flash drive and sync them to all of my other Dropboxes.

Dropbox Does It Well…

So, now that my Google Docs are in my Dropbox, let me tell you why Dropbox rules, and why I still use it even though I have discovered a more comprehensive solution.

It has some great features:

• 2gb free space when you sign up;
• More space for a price (although I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t pay for more space with Dropbox in a little bit);
• Integration into the native folder structure of your OS, whether you are on Windows, Mac, or Linux;
• Portability, in that you can store a copy of the Windows version on your USB stick (instructions here – you’ll need a Dropbox forum account, but that’s free, too);
• A “Public” folder, for convenient file sharing with friends, family, clients, and colleagues (read the how-to file in mine)
• Clean, simple web interface for accessing your files from any connected browser;
• Proxy configuration support (useful on college campuses);
• Version protection, in that when 2 copies conflict somehow, Dropbox will save each version and append the name of the device (Desktop, Laptop, USB, etc.) to the new file name, so you can decide for yourself which one you want to keep

I may have missed a few things, but the above list sums up why Dropbox is so damn useful. Essentially, it replaces the “My Documents” folder on each machine I use, so everything is always synced and available on the net. Yes, there are security issues with storing stuff with a service that lacks robust security capabilities.  No, I don’t put anything in my Dropbox account that I wouldn’t want anyone to see.

So, as you can see, Dropbox is a good option because it’s a low-impact, no-learning-curve, take-it-anywhere solution for those who don’t have much to store or sync and aren’t paranoid about security. But it isn’t the only option.

…But SpiderOak Does It Better

I’m going to throw more bullet points at you. SpiderOak Backup is similar to Dropbox, in that they offer cloud-based storage, starting off for free at 2gb, provide a cross-platform client for managing, synchronizing, and sharing your files, and have a tiered payment program. But there, the similarities stop.

Here’s the joy of SpiderOak:

• Encrypted file transfers: uploads and downloads are encrypted during transfer by their cross-platform software
• Encrypted storage: your data is encrypted on their storage servers in such a way that not even employees can access it
• Redundancy: they do not put all of your data in one basket, instead, it is spread and copied over multiple, geographically-diverse servers

These are the three huge reasons their approach appeals so much to me. However, the pricing plan is where they deal the death blow to the competition. They offer 100gb for $10 per month—half the price of Dropbox’s 100gb account—and those who sign up for a SpiderOak account using their student (blahblah@blah.edu) email address will pay only $5 per month to back up and sync 100gb of data.

At that price, I won’t even exceed the cost of a 1tb hard drive for about 2 years, give or take. Even still, once I have my own dedicated backup hardware, I’ll probably maintain my SpiderOak account to ensure that extra level of backup, sync, and access.

After all, at the dawn of the cloud era, content may be king, but if you lose it and don’t have a backup, you’ve lost the kingdom altogether.