Speculation about a “G-Drive” has been around for years: A GDrive being hard disk space in the cloud, accessible from anywhere on the bullet-proof infrastructure of Google.
Articles from 2006 Claim “GDrive, Not a Rumor“. Even yesterday, we saw Internet abuzz with Google GDrive rumors.
It’s called vaporware folks. All this buzz about something that may happen someday.
But you don’t have to wait anymore; and you shouldn’t. You can have a “Gdrive” right now.
Why would you want a “Gdrive”?
It’s a Fact: Shit Happens.
In the USA In 2007 there were:
- Water damage and freezing claims occur about 1.5 times for each 100 homeowner’s policies per year, with an average severity of over $5000.
- Something like 50% of marriages end in divorce. With all those crazy” ex”s, friends and relatives running around your personal property is NOT 100% safe.
If all your physical computer property were destroyed or stolen tomorrow, would you be up shit’s creek without a paddle? Would you lose all your personal photos, videos, documents and working projects? If so, you need a bullet proof backup solution. You need a GDrive.
Now, if you could get a scalable 50 Gig “Gdrive” for around $10 / month - would you want it?
Because if you cross out the word “Google” in G-drive and fill in “GAMEY”, a “Gdrive” is already available. (GAMEY = Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo).
About Amazon S3
From Amazon:
“Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites.”
You Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee.
Storage is $0.150 per GB / Month
Transfer is $0.100 per GB Upstream and $0.170 per GB downstream.
When you do the math, it’s so cheap to store your date on this bullet proof service that you really can’t afford not to do it. 10 GB of storage would run you less than $2 a month.
How to Setup a GDrive Using Amazon’s S3
It’s easier than you thought.
Step 1: Sign Up For Amazon’s Amazon Simple Storage Service.
Step 2: Install the S3Fox Organizer for Amazon (S3Fox) Firefox Plugin.
Step 3: Go to Tools -> S3 Organizer and Set up an Amazon S3 account with by Naming the account and entering your Access Key and Secret Key.
Step 4: Create your first “bucket”. When you right click on the left side you will see an option for “Create Directory”. Any root level directory created will be a “bucket”.
Step 5. Double click the bucket, and start uploading. There’s even an option to sync with a folder built into s3fox.
For Video and Photos, Flickr Pro is a better bet
If you have more than 10 Gigs of personal photos and videos, Flickr Pro is probably a better backup solution for those filetypes. For $2 per month, you get unlimited transfer, unlimited storage, a nifty file interface, good privacy and sharing options, and a desktop uploader. You can even upload photos via an email attachment.
Facebook or Myspace are also worth considering for video and photo management depending on your needs. But just keeping those photos on your hard drive with a DVD backup means that you lose all those “memories” if your house burns down. How much would that suck?
People know they should back up their data. For me, $100 or less a year to have my data safe on GAMEY is a no brainer.
How much is your data worth?
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