So that's roughly the same as storing everything on S3 and downloading almost all of it once per month. Of course it has functionality as well, so the pricing appears reasonable to me if used for data that is actually used and not just archived.

Interesting - I wonder if they can/do detect identical files and store them once?

One of the storage solutions I worked on did this - EMC Centera - mostly to handle email archive (in corporates you can end up with the same attachment duplicated many times over - it's a bit of a pain).

I built a file storage web system several years ago (very popular when free, but when the free beta ended not many people wanted to pay). We computed the hash of each uploaded file, and only stored one copy of the file based on the hash. The database based filesystem simply recorded the hash of the file as basically a pointer to the actual file. This allowed multiple people to have the same file, with different file names (stored in the db), but only actually store the file once. Very simple.

Looks good, but I can't stand the cheesy fake-bubbly voiceover on the video. I keep expecting her to tell me it's only 3 easy payments of $19.95 and if I order in the next 10 minutes I'll get a free [something... ]

Anyway, good work, but please rethink the video.

The video is cheesy, but I thought that it was entertaining.

Does anyone know - Do you sign up for an account of size "X", or do you just get an account and they bill based upon how much you use?

When you sign up, they ask you what size you want. I haven't gotten an account yet, I just saw an image of it from:

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/01/zumodrive_is_goi...

Ah ok - think a usage based account with a cap would be a good option too.

$2.99/month for 10gig is not too shabby!

How about $2.25 a month for 250gig instead?

Where?

Buy a 250gig Buffalo TurboUSB 2.0 external drive for $80 and it works out to less than $2.25 a month assuming a 3 year life span -- the duration of the manufacturer's warranty.

Then you'll have all your data with you all time time so you'll never have to be online to access it, and you'll never have to worry about some 'service company' losing your data or allowing it to get into the wrong hands, and you'll never be subject to the company going out of business.

In other words, take responsibility for storing your own data -- on your own hardware -- instead of trying to find excuses to pay someone else to store it in the cloud for you.

:)

There is cost in overhead, too. Beyond getting the drive:

  - Connecting it to the internet so you can access it from anywhere
  - Setting up iTunes to stream properly
  - Setting up a mechanism that caches recent/popular files locally
  - Develop an iPhone app to access the drive