Strongspace - Secure File Storage and Sharing
Posted on October 2, 2005, under Security.
Having several gigs of data that my wife and I would really be sad to lose (mostly baby photos), I’d been thinking about off-site backups for quite some time.
However, until recently, I’d only set up local redundancy. I set up a SuSE Linux server in my house, and made redundant copies of important files, so that if my main machine failed me in some way, I would still have the copies on the other machine. This is a decent solution for files of medium importance, but not for very important data that would be disasterous to lose in say, a fire or some other major accident.
This weekend I signed up for an account at Strongspace, created by the fine folks at TextDrive. They provide a nice, clean web interface to backup for files with. You can also create unlimited accounts to have read-only access to all the files you have backed up. This makes for a nice way to us to securily share photos online with family.
However, for those a little more technically inclined, you can set up rsync over SFTP, and keep your Strongspace account in sync with multiple directories on your local network. This is very conveniant, as rsync will automate the adding, updating, and deleting of any set of files/directories you tell it to. Once you initially populate it with your data, the next time you sync, you will only upload what changed. You don’t have to re-upload everything again.
I am very happy with Strongspace so far, and my wife and I feel much better knowing we have secure, off-site backups of our daughter’s photos and other files that our important to us.
Only one complaint so far: Setting up rsync on Windows was a little difficult. For instance, I know that my wife couldn’t do it, let alone my mother. I would love to see Strongspace include a GUI rsync application as part of their services. This would enhance their value and customer satisfaction multiple times over.