A while ago I posted a blurb (well… not here but on Google+) about Barracuda‘s cloud-based backup service analogous to Dropbox. Copy.com is an interesting contender in the playing field of cloudbackup. This is what the company has to say about data protection and security: “Because Copy is the product of network security and backup giant Barracuda, your files are stored on servers we control and manage, not with a 3rd party like most cloud storage services. For increased security, your data is protected by multiple layers of encryption, including top-secret grade AES 256, both during transfer and while at rest on Barracuda’s enterprise-class cloud storage“.
It’s up to you how seriously you take that claim, but let me just give this advice: if you trust your most sensitive files to the cloud, apply your own encryption first! For example, I have a TrueCrypt container in my cloud storage which contains everything private I have on my computers. This encrypted container is replicated to all my computers as well as to the cloud, providing sufficient backup safety and still keeping my data hidden from secret snoopers without supercomputers.
The site advertises that they use a data-deduplication mechanism, therefore I doubt that your files will be stored in such a way that the NSA is unable to access them… still, it’s a lot of storage for a safety copy of your photos. I guess I’ll take their claims at face value.
Back to Copy: this is a free storage solution, although there are business subscriptions. New free accounts get 15 GB cloud storage for free, and that is quite a bit. When you refer someone else to start using this service, both sides get an additional free 5 GB storage. Click on the link below to get your 20 GB for free, it gives me an additional 5 GB too.
Bonus referral link: https://copy.com/?r=zWvkFg
They have an interesting twist to the concept of file-sharing. WIth Dropbox, you can share part of your own dropbox with other Dropbox users. That shared space will count in the quota calculations of everyone who takes part in the share. So for instance, if you have a free 10 GB dropbox quota you will not be able to add your friend’s shared folder if that folder is larger than 10 GB. With Copy on the other hand, the calculation is different. If you share an amount of data with others, then the used quota is divided among the sharers. So, if you are sharing 10 GB with 4 of your friends, everyone in your group of 5 will not be taxed for 10 GB, but only for 10/5 = 2 GB of quota usage. That is nice.
Sync clients are available for many platforms, Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) and Android included. It took a while to deliver on my promise to create a Slackware package for the Linux sync client, because I was not sure how I wanted to wrap the binaries. But finally here it is. I decided to call the package “copy-client” in analogy to my “dropbox-client” package.
A copy-client package for Slackware, 64-bit as well as 32-bit. Working on versions 13.37 and onwards (those are the Slackware versions I tried at least).
Have fun! Don’t forget to claim your 20 GB free storage using my referral link, and make me a happy camper.
Eric
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