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AOL To Offer Free On-Line Back-Up |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Saturday, 05 August 2006 |
Need a place to store or backup your data while you're out
and about? AOL is the first major brand name to announce plans for free online storage with its 5GB Xdrive offer.
It's not so much that the idea is new or innovative, sites
like Streamload have been offering free
online storage for some time and mobilised
last wrote about the fabled GDrive offering
from Google back in July.
There's even a Firefox extension called GSpace or GMail Space that
lets you use your Gmail email storage allocation as an FTP host.
In April we also reported on
a an announcement by Telstra subsidiary Kaz, which offers a fee-based service
specifically designed for small business back-up.
The advantage of such a
service is that the back-ups are incrementally. Not incrementally changed
files, but incrementally changed portions of files. SO if you make a one word
change in a PowerPoint presentation, only that change is sent back not the
whole file.
With the Streamload service you get 25GB for free with the
only limitations that you can only use 1GB of bandwidth a month and file sizes
are limited to 25MB.
But with AOL's planned offering, powered y its existing Xdrive service which it acquired in August last
year, users don't appear to have any limit on the amount of data they can shift
on a monthly basis. We may have to wait till the service is launched in
September to see whether that holds true.
AOL's Xdrive not only allows you to store files such as photos,
documents, music, videos, and so on and then retrieve them from anywhere with a
Web connection, the system can be used to automatically back up important files
or folders, or auto-upload any e-mail attachments they receive via major
providers.
The free 5 GB storage offering is open to all comers, but
you will need an AOL or AIM screenname - a free signup. The service
will begin in early September.
"People are accumulating
personal digital assets at a fast pace, especially in areas like digital photos
and videos," said John McKinley, president of AOL Digital Services.
"Yet our in-home research shows that few people are taking steps to
protect their digital memories from accidental loss or destruction. By offering
consumers the combination of 5 GB of free secure online storage and Xdrive's
powerful automated backup and online sharing tools, AOL is giving people a
simple, effective and free way to protect their digital memories and have
access to them anywhere they go."
All files stored on the Xdrive service are protected in secure,
state-of-the-art data facilities. Users can access their files via a browser at
the site, or through special Xdrive software.
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