DropBox: "Cloud" service for storing, syncing, sharing files
I found Dropbox, a nifty service for storing files online, keeping their copies on several of your own computers in sync, or sharing some of them with your friends.
- You download the Dropbox client (supported on Windows XP and Vista (32 and 64-bit), Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard, as well as Ubuntu 7.10+ and Fedora Core 9+)
- 2GB of free storage provided with it
- You can then drag and drop files that you want to store online or share into the Dropbox.
- Dropbox maintains a snapshot of files
- If any of the files get updated, it sends only blocks that have changed
- It also offers the ability to undelete and restore files from the copies that are stored online.
- You can create Public folders for sharing, files in Public folders have URL’s that you can share with your friends.
While the company seems to be consumer-focused, the service is usable for dull and boring corporate stuff, like instantaneous automatic backups of files that change and also enables disaster recovery.
Someone has used Dropbox for syncing and sharing VM’s. This is an interesting use case, however, readers should pay heed to the transfer times as image sizes grow
