Your views on skydrive, please?

bungleberry

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My shiny new Dell XPS runs Win8 (not 8.1). Needing to beef up security backup I've been looking at the (UK) Which cloud reports, and they include a decent rating for skydrive.

I'm content with Office 2010. Loads of pix and music. I guess I'd need to pay for <60gb. For various reasons I still have an old-fashioned copper wire internet connection through BT, i.e. not fibre. Concerned about speed implications and any other considerations.

Would be interested in your experiences!
 

My Computer

System One

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Hi there,

I find Skydrive great and useful. I've been using it for quite a while now. If you are using Office 2010, it will hand-shake well with Skydrive. I also have a Windows 8 phone and I'm able to retrieve all my files stored from Skydrive.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Enterprise
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo
    CPU
    Intel i5
Thanks for your thoughts on this!

A supplementary: Somewhat to my surprise, I've managed to install a version of MS Money (remember that?) to run under Win8. Can anyone please tell me if it's possible to upload the data (it's in a .mny folder) into skydrive?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Sure, you could put a money file into skydive.

Remember, 60gb with a home internet provider with limited upload speeds is going to take quite awhile.

Also, be sure to back up skydive regularly. Friend of mine one day just woke up and his skydive was empty, it synchronized the empty directory back to his machine and he lost his data. He called MS and they said they had a problem and his data was lost and unrecoverable.

Finally, consider security for your files. Baking and tax info either should not be out there or protected in an encrypted folder with a tool such as Boxcryptor.
 

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As long as you stay with Windows 8 and the SkyDrive for this version of Windows, it works perfectly.

After updating to Windows 8.1, it stopped synchronizing the files for me, and now I have even disabled it because it was preventing my PC to automatically sleep. I'm sure M$ will fix it, but for now, SkyDrive under Windows 8.1 isn't stable anymore.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 32/64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
As long as you stay with Windows 8 and the SkyDrive for this version of Windows, it works perfectly.

After updating to Windows 8.1, it stopped synchronizing the files for me, and now I have even disabled it because it was preventing my PC to automatically sleep. I'm sure M$ will fix it, but for now, SkyDrive under Windows 8.1 isn't stable anymore.

what you said
 

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    Windows 8 Pro
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I wouldn't suggest any backups in free featured third party hands without an additional backup secured elsewhere. Easier, faster, and more secure to backup locally, even on an external drive.
 

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I wouldn't suggest any backups in free featured third party hands without an additional backup secured elsewhere. Easier, faster, and more secure to backup locally, even on an external drive.

I agree with this.

SkyDrive, or any other cloud, is great for keeping work files synced on. I have several and have separated them in my different hobbies. :) I have one for my Photography, another for my stories I write, and one where I keep more personal files on.

However, my system backups I keep on an external hard disk and this backup is then also copied to a NAS.

Just to make sure that I always have a second backup in the case both my PC and external hard disk would die at the same time.


Making a backup over the Internet is too time consuming if you don't have a fast upload and download connection. My download is fast, but I only have a 6MB upload. That's way too slow for a backup externally.

For safety, you could always store a backup drive at a friends home. Just in case your house and all in it is destroyed. I do this for my photos, because losing them would be a disaster, even when it's only a hobby. But for most people, at least one backup on an external hard disk would probably be enough already.
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 32/64
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Thanks to all. I'm sorry to keep banging on about this.

Yes, my main reason for interest in skydrive is as a backup medium, rather than for sharing (although we do have a Win8 laptop).

In addition to the .mny folder I maintain, I have a family history app which creates a .ged folder. It now appears that, yup, skydrive can upload but the file types it actually guarantees are the bog standard ones, i.e. do not include these two, which are v important to me. Therefore it appears that, as strongly suggested above, I would need to use alternative forms of security anyway, which rather defeats my objective.

Regarding an external drive:- unfortunately my reason for pursuing cloud backup is that I have been using a western digital external, but that has developed a will of its own! Also, I had thought offsite storage to be advantageous, although I was grateful for the 'cons' mentioned above. Perhaps I should now explore using the laptop for the purpose. If so, what's the best way of achieving that please?
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8
What do you mean with 'a will of its own'? (I have a clue about it, but I just ask it to be sure you mean what I think.)


For clouds, I also use Dropbox, Box and Google Drive, and I'm very happy about those three. In the past, I also used SkyDrive and never had any troubles with it. Any kind of file was properly shared between my computers. So, I'm sure I will go back to it, the moment Microsoft repairs the now buggy Windows 8.1 SkyDrive.

With Dropbox, you can also share folders with people who also have a Dropbox account. I use this for sending documents to friends. It's more reliable than E-mail for me.

The other two are for my personal use, so I haven't checked the sharing capabilities yet.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 32/64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Rudy: The external drive is only used for desktop backups, but recently has been giving occasional error messages. It was supplied up with an inbuilt WD proprietary program, the sole material benefit of which seems to be to give password protection for the drive. Am not sure if it's that prog which is at fault, in which case I could obviously reformat the whole disk without password protection. But I suspect that the drive is just on its way out. Although I've been using it for way over a year, comments on other forums (e.g. Amazon) do not appear to rate the drive highly. Naturally I don't want to wait until it finally packs up.
Posts elsewhere indicate that sugarsync is quite specific about what file types it can accept, apparently not the two suffixes I mentioned. That leads me to wonder if the other clouds you mention are too?
Now looks to me as if I need to set up desktop backup on my wife's laptop, and vice versa. But what's the best way? File sharing wouldn't be an issue.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Hi there
The trouble with any of these type of services is that they aren't really appropriate for DECENT backups -- an Acronis image of your system might be at least 30 GB - which even with decent internet will take a little while to UPLOAD (what the Ads fail to tell you is that the UPLOAD speeds are horrendously slower than downloads - usually -- sometimes 10X slower too and that doesn't take account of how busy the Cloud server might be as well).

If you also need to restore your system in an emergency then most of the bootable recovery systems (Acronis, Free Macrium etc) won't normally have an Internet access available -- they are geared to be able to restore from local or network media. (Local can of course include external USB drives etc).

For small files you want to share the service is fine - however for emails I can't see the point since any IMAP server gives you access to your emails whenever and wherever you want - and on any reasonable device too.

I'd only tend to use these services if they were FREE - and these days a lot of businesses now BLOCK access to these types of "sharing Mechanisms" since they feel this could be a backdoor way of getting malware on to their corporate networks.

@bungleberry -- simplest and cheapest mechanism is to save to an external USB -- small size 2TB one's available in the UK for around 60 - 70 GBP these days (inc VAT at PC World etc). If you have a NAS or a network drive accessible via both computers then store it there but IMO this is over the top for a simple application where you just need your backup images in case of system or hardware failure. I'd just go out and buy one of these small HDD's for your backup and use a program like Acronis or Free Macrium.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Rudy: The external drive is only used for desktop backups, but recently has been giving occasional error messages. It was supplied up with an inbuilt WD proprietary program, the sole material benefit of which seems to be to give password protection for the drive. Am not sure if it's that prog which is at fault, in which case I could obviously reformat the whole disk without password protection. But I suspect that the drive is just on its way out. Although I've been using it for way over a year, comments on other forums (e.g. Amazon) do not appear to rate the drive highly. Naturally I don't want to wait until it finally packs up.
Posts elsewhere indicate that sugarsync is quite specific about what file types it can accept, apparently not the two suffixes I mentioned. That leads me to wonder if the other clouds you mention are too?
Now looks to me as if I need to set up desktop backup on my wife's laptop, and vice versa. But what's the best way? File sharing wouldn't be an issue.

Okay, you don't have the problems I encountered when using external hard disks. :)

After I had reinstalled Windows on my PC, I suddenly got messages that I couldn't move, or delete, files because I had no access to them, even when my user account was still setup in the same way.

I fixed all my external hard disk problems by formatting them to exFat. This is a system that works cross platform and doesn't add specific Windows clearance to the files. So, I can use my external Hard Disks on all my PC's and never run into access troubles because it doesn't recognize the user on that system.

I was thinking maybe you had run into this problem as well. ;)


I have to say, I have external had disks in use from different brands, some of them I'm already using for 3 years or more and one of them, attached to my laptop, is active every day.

I don't save any documents to my laptop, I only have my OS and programs on that drive, and my external hard disk is only used for hold my data and my backup image from my laptop. So, it's working like hell for me. :)

You sometimes have to have a little but of luck with these things. I had a HD die on me after 6 months, and I still have an old IDE hard disk in a machine in the attic that's now almost 10 years old.


And like jimbo45 says, backup through cloud is almost not done, or you need to have a very fast connection to an external datacenter. Else, it takes hours and hours to get it uploaded.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 32/64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Also, be sure to back up skydive regularly. Friend of mine one day just woke up and his skydive was empty, it synchronized the empty directory back to his machine and he lost his data. He called MS and they said they had a problem and his data was lost and unrecoverable.
Thanks for that - it's a useful cautionary tale

Baking and tax info either should not be out there or protected in an encrypted folder with a tool such as Boxcryptor.
Gotta look after those top-secret recipes! ;)

(I know it's only a 1-letter typo, but it made me smile! :) )
 

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