Cloud storage

Hi, this might only relate to UK users. I was taking a look around the Virgin Media pages (i have my telecoms and broadband with them) and saw that they are offering unlimited cloud storage for £5 a month. I have been worried about long term storage of finished projects and this seems to be a perfect solution. However, being ever hesitant when it comes to spending anything, I thought it might be prudent to ask your opinion about this approach. Cheers

How do you want to use online storage, do you have a fast enough connection?
What are there backup conditions, are they giving you a guarantee for your files?
If you planning on using it for a archive why not if you have time and a dedicated line for uploading and downloading footage.
I wouldn't advice using for active projects better of with a local RAID.

Thanks for the insights. I have tbs of old projects that just need secure homes with the ability to recall them if they are ever needed again.
I have online via Raid but I have had two HD failures in the last two years and been stung in the past with tape based back-up (record/playback head mechanism drifting over the course of a year so that earlier written projects could not be read by the authoring device, unless I paid a further £400-£800 for a re-aignment!!!grrr).
I have a 50mb line going up to 100mb in the next 3 months (for free, love you Virgin).
No guarantees though, just a promise of better security and cross server backup on their Data servers, which are way better than anything I can utilise/access locally.
£60 a year for unlimited is a very tempting deal...

My only concern would be what do you do if they cancel the service, or change things out drastically? At least Apple gave plenty of warning when iDisk (which was awesome being on the road as much as I am) was shutting down. I'm now a DropBox fan, but it's not as slick as MobileMe was. Nor as cheap.

I'd use online cloud service as a backup, but have your own copies somewhere local, too!

Ben you are tight Dropbox is not as slick as MobileMe it is slicker it is faster that is for sure.

Back to the topic and jokes aside. I would advice you getting a hard drive "vault" for archiving.

More slick? Not by a long shot. I could do more, faster, easier with iDisk and MobileMe than DropBox is capable of.

Online backups with reputable companies is a really nice solution. But again, keep a local copy, too.

MobileMe was slow and a resource hog

The vault is what I have. My issue is that I don't have ultimate cover for a theft, fire or flood scenario.
I have a 90 day grace period if I leave the service. for the cost of a starbucks I don't really know why I'm hesitant. I'll give it a go and report back in the coming months. Thanks of all the input.

Scrubelicious wrote: MobileMe was slow and a resource hog

I never saw that in all the years I used it.

Moving on...

BenB wrote:

Scrubelicious wrote: MobileMe was slow and a resource hog

I never saw that in all the years I used it. How can a cloud service be a resource hog? Never was slow, super flexible, was amazing. I actually used it for business daily for years.

Moving on...

Maybe you where lucky on your side, but as many other users for example at Apple Support Communities it was slow and the iDisk sync took a big chunk out of the CPU.
Dropbox seems to work for me...