Hello guys and gals,

I'm thinking about closing down my Rapidshare account and move the hosting of my files (SST-Profiles, Nvidia-inspector profiles and other stuff like videos) to another filehoster/cloud storage hoster. So what can you recommend?

I'll be using this account to host my files and the files of my clan, so it should be affordable, give all downloaders a decent speed and not be limited to a file-size like 35 mb, but I don't want to upload files bigger than 1 Gigabyte, it takes forever.

Another big thing for me is the country in which the servers are placed, I don't want the chinese or the NSA/CIA having the right to look through my files. I'm not uploading Illegal stuff, but I just hate the idea of somebody looking through my stuff on principle. I'm not dumb enough to upload sensitive files at a cloud storage hoster, sorry I don't trust 'em that far.

Well this guide http://www.tomsguide.com/us/megaupload-mediafire-rapidshare-skydrive-dropbox,review-1730.html gave me some ideas, but I want to hear what you're thinking.

So here is what I'm thinking:

Dropbox is interesting thanks to me being in an euro-country, it is pretty close to a year of rapidshare, however if I purchase two years of storage that would be 78,41 € x2 or 156,82 € for Dropbox vs. 99,90 € on Rapidshare. So Dropbox needs some pretty good features to beat rapidshare.
So how are the downloadspeeds on Dropbox for not registered users?

MS Skydrive...........well I don't like it, its Microsoft, and you'll need a Windows LiveID, something which I successfully avoided the last years. Do you still need a hotmail adress for it? The most hacked e-mail provider.

Google Docs, interesting, cheap, according to the guid a horrible UI. I don't need a pretty UI that does everything for you, but it should not be unnessarily complicated. Again it needs a google account. Google, well sometimes they're okay, and sometimes not.

Box, sounds interesting, but has some problems. The file-size limit is nagging, and Dropbox is offering double the Upload space for the same price....and personal with up to 50 GB is limited to one user. The big solution with up to a 1TB is cheaper than Drobox, but then I don't think we'll need that much space.

So whom would you reccomend.

FYI: that article is out of date and not accurate on some details like free space.

I set my wife and I up on MS Skydrive, mainly just to claim the free 25 GB. You just can't beat free 25GB.
If Hotmail is the most hacked, it's due to being widespread among people who don't know that PASSWORD is not a good password, not due to lack of care in security. However, no, you do not need a hotmail address for a Live account login. Mine is not hotmail, haven't had hotmail in many years. I'm not sure if you can get the 25 GB with a new account or not, at one point that was going to be only for existing users who claimed it (default was 5 GB I think).
...but I'm not using this thing, since it's not Android friendly. My phone, not me.

The main thing you should consider is the size of the files you'll be uploading. Each service has a different limit, so some simply might not suffice.

Google Drive looks pretty good, with a lot of features coming down the pipe. I'll probably give that a serious shot soon. Only 5 GB free, but that might change due to MS's offering. Pricing for larger accounts looks pretty reasonable. IIRC, it's got the largest upload limit.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html


What would be interesting is if someone came up with an app to round up all the free space out there into one huge spanned drive. Dangerous if one site is down, but would still be a lot of at least temporary storage for free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_hosting_services

Cloudsafe is in Germany. Skydrive limit has been lowered to 7GB.

You can (and should) encrypt sensitive data, before uploading. (TrueCrypt?)

Skydrive: 7 GB (free)
(25 GB for existing users prior to April 22, 2012)

That means they've already raised it from 5GB for new users. If you have a Live login before that date, you've got 25 GB free, just go in and claim it.

You'd need to check that. I think they lowered it for everyone, except for those that were already using more than 7GB.

Well JAMF and Raw Kryptonite, thank your for the links and the infos. Yeah the article itself was old, but the pricing under my thoughts were form their sites. It's good to hear that you can used other e-mail providers than hotmail, and yes Raw Kryptonite, The actual security of an account hinges on the user. Well my experiences with it haven't been too bad, but neither were they good.

Google Drive looks pretty sweet on the other hand, the prices are very good for the amount of storage. Though were are those servers located?


The List of File-hosters is very intersting and I'll keep Cloudsafe in mind JAMF. I like germany, but switzerland is usually better, I'm a bit wary after than ACTA thing, so far it hasn't passed the EU-Parliment..........but let's see if it won't pass or if it's just tactical maneuvering.

The file-size, well it's gonna be general purpose, videos up to a Gigabyte, maybe more if a clan member has a fast upload, profiles for controllers which are just some hundred Kilobytes and other stuff, like missions and Campaings for Arma and or Flight sims. Maybe also for photographs and screenshots. Photos can be JPEGs or TIFFs 24-bit (8-bit per channel) and 48-bit (16-bit per channel) tiffs.

Thanks for all your advice, I'll keep them in mind, and if you have of your advice to share, I'd be thankful.

P.S. That application of yours Raw Kryptonite sounds interesting, but I think it would need to mirror most data, exactly for the security reason you mentioned.

Glanced over that line in your post, so: GladiNet does combine quite a few of these into one. Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive, Amazon S3, ADrive, Box.net and for a German user that has T-Online, he could add his 25GB T-Online storage too.

Well that's a million bucks I'm too late to make. LOL
The main issue for me is that I don't have much to put up. It's not enough space for a backup image of my drives, and I do that here anyway, which is enough for at home. I use Photobucket for pictures, paying a couple of bucks a month for larger files.

I did upload music to the free Amazon space, and I played with their cloud player a couple of times, but I just don't care that much about music these days.

On Google servers, they're all over the place and kept pretty secret. That service would be the best for redundancy, no one holds your data forever like Google. Whether you like it or not. LOL

The Skydrive space is legit, but again, that's for existing users that bother to claim it. If you don't claim it, it's not like they bump you up automatically.




Still, until these services get to the 500GB for dirt cheap level, I don't think they're much worth it for me other than making documents remotely accessible. Even then you could use Hamachi to access your own pc.

So according to what I've read, you'll only can claim the 25GB, if you see the button as in the image:

If you have had a Live login from before that date mentioned earlier, you should have the option. On ours, there was a link at the top of the home page for the account.

i have 25 gb skydrive, i have not used it once though, might start doing it this summer.

I use Skydrive. Have a lot of docs there. You can lock them where they are private or send a link to them so it's a pretty good deal.

Well, I've had the Hotmail account since at least 2003 (Il2 squad mostly had MSN, so I needed it, next to ICQ), and it isn't showing the button.

Hotmail is not a "Live" account unless you associate it with Live.
It's odd, but there's a distinction.