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Bitcasa: Unlimited Storage Capacity & Unlimited File Sizes & Unlimited File Versioning!


CenSin

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I just thought I might want to share with everyone this new cloud storage service called Bitcasa (disclaimer: not free). The service has been around for a while but only for testing. It opened up for service to the general public yesterday.

The service touts the following features:

  • Unlimited storage: They claim they can provide this cheaply by storing identical blocks of bytes from different people only once instead of n times.
  • Unlimited file size: There is no limit on file sizes. Most other services I've used have a 2GB or 5GB limit.
  • Unlimited file versioning: You can go back in time to find previous versions of your files. The web interface provides a little calendar control for you to go back in time.
  • Folder mirroring: Pick any folders and they will always be uploaded to Bitcasa after every change. The limitation is that the files in a mirrored folder on Bitcasa cannot be changed from computers other than the one it was uploaded from, but that's a limitation that they might be working on to remove.
  • File sharing: Every file has a link you can share with the public. If you want to keep the file private, don't share the link.
  • Applications for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux: Linux support is actually in alpha stage, but that's a whole lot of platforms. The Windows application is native 64-bit for geeks like me who hate 32-bit software on 64-bit systems. On Windows, this creates a removable drive with the size 7.99EB (that's exabytes). Bitcasa's storage actually gets a drive letter!
  • Encryption: The service advertises encryption, but it would appear to be that the encryption is entirely useless since encryption and decryption is done on the web server when you use their web client. Obviously, if they could do that then they have your encryption keys so this is not a feature to anyone serious about security.

I'm sure a lot of creative professionals could make use of this service.

 

(For those who question my motives for posting this: I've been working with YouSendIt for a while since they provided cheap unlimited storage and had practically no bandwidth limits on my uploads, but all the little quirks with their service really pissed me off after 2 years with them. You can take a look at their ideas forum—ideas that were suggested by users years ago which they claimed to be working on which has still not come to fruition. Two years with their shitty service has just driven me nuts: no Unicode support—and even some valid characters on most file systems get converted to HTML entities; their Windows client has a fixed directory for storing files; for the browser, you have to upload files all over again from the beginning if there is a disconnection or error; files are limited to 2GB; and plenty more little things that are annoying. I'm hoping someone else who is looking for something like Bitcasa will find this post and leave the crappy cloud storage providers to rot.)

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There must be thousands of file hosters out on the internet. This one has its ups and downs, but I'm still going to use MEGA or my own personal web server for files.

My primary concern is getting a host that can keep files safe and is financially stable enough to not disappear overnight with my data. There's also the fact that BitCasa is cheap for the service they're offering. I'm probably going to be a heavy user (multi-terabyte archives), so it's as ideal of a solution as I can find.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been testing it out… works great so far. The upload client hashes the file as explorer is supposedly "copying" it to the infinite drive. The client doesn't actually upload any of the data, but the hashes so if the server says the data has been uploaded by another user, you save the bandwidth that would have otherwise been eaten by the file. A 50GB Blu-Ray disc image of The Dark Knight only took a minute to upload… and the bandwidth monitor showed that the client consumed just under 100kbps the whole time.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been testing it out… works great so far. The upload client hashes the file as explorer is supposedly "copying" it to the infinite drive. The client doesn't actually upload any of the data, but the hashes so if the server says the data has been uploaded by another user, you save the bandwidth that would have otherwise been eaten by the file. A 50GB Blu-Ray disc image of The Dark Knight only took a minute to upload… and the bandwidth monitor showed that the client consumed just under 100kbps the whole time.

This is high end file sharing or website hosting?

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  • 1 year later...

Apparently, Bitcasa's new CEO has been its undoing. Bitcasa is on its way to extinction (at least in spirit). In a surprise move, Bitcasa announced that their old infrastructure would be taken down in 3 weeks (by November 15), and only those with 10TB of data or less could migrate to their new service for $999 a year (10TB plan) or $99 a year (1TB plan). Those with more than 10TB and unable to reduce their usage would have accounts deleted by the deadline. The forums are currently flooded with angry and sarcastic messages of panic as those with under 10TB realize their data has been taken hostage. There has been talk of a lawsuit as some consider it extortion. Most folks cannot realistically download their data back to their hard drives in time to save all of it.

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