Nov 8 10:00 am
I want to centralize storage at our office so that media (large quantities of photos, occasionally video) aren’t strewn across multiple people’s computers. In the past, we’ve used JungleDisk, an S3 desktop client, but the software is buggy and hard to love. Our needs: Centralized storage, at least 100-200GB Remote access Fast access at the office (it’s no fun uploading large video files over DSL) Automatic data backup I prefer the remote access to be as a mountable drive, for setup for everyone to be simple and use as little add-on software as possible, and for the whole thing to be set-up-and-forget-it. Based on my research and suggestions from others, I looked at JungleDisk, an Airport Extreme with USB drive, Expandrive, PogoPlug, a Mac set up as a server, and Zumodrive. The results are here. What’s surprising is that there’s no clear-cut best option. If Airport Extreme had cloud backup, it’d probably win as in most other respects it’s the simplest and best option. As it stands, I’m left to choose between Pogoplug with cloud backup via one of our desktops or a Mac I setup just to share drives. Neither’s ideal. What I’d really like is a simple device that shares a drive on my local network, backs up the data to the cloud, and makes it available remotely. How can it not exist? UPDATE: Dropbox won’t work because all of our computers are laptops and don’t have drives large enough for a complete local mirror of all the files. A mac with dropbox also won’t work because accessing a dropbox shared directory copies all those files to your computer. What should I buy?

I want to centralize storage at our office so that media (large quantities of photos, occasionally video) aren’t strewn across multiple people’s computers. In the past, we’ve used JungleDisk, an S3 desktop client, but the software is buggy and hard to love.

Our needs:

  • Centralized storage, at least 100-200GB
  • Remote access
  • Fast access at the office (it’s no fun uploading large video files over DSL)
  • Automatic data backup

I prefer the remote access to be as a mountable drive, for setup for everyone to be simple and use as little add-on software as possible, and for the whole thing to be set-up-and-forget-it.

Based on my research and suggestions from others, I looked at JungleDisk, an Airport Extreme with USB drive, Expandrive, PogoPlug, a Mac set up as a server, and Zumodrive.

The results are here.

What’s surprising is that there’s no clear-cut best option. If Airport Extreme had cloud backup, it’d probably win as in most other respects it’s the simplest and best option.

As it stands, I’m left to choose between Pogoplug with cloud backup via one of our desktops or a Mac I setup just to share drives. Neither’s ideal.

What I’d really like is a simple device that shares a drive on my local network, backs up the data to the cloud, and makes it available remotely. How can it not exist?

UPDATE: Dropbox won’t work because all of our computers are laptops and don’t have drives large enough for a complete local mirror of all the files. A mac with dropbox also won’t work because accessing a dropbox shared directory copies all those files to your computer.

What should I buy?