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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Taking Xdrive for a spin

I'm giving AOL's online backup service, Xdrive, a try.

First of all, I should state I'm not really a big fan of anything by AOL. Although, I do use their AIM chat software. I read the terms of service for Xdrive, and there wasn't anything I couldn't accept. So, I accepted it.

Also, of the other online backup services I looked at, X-Drive seemed one of the least likely to go out of business anytime soon. But, only because it's owned by a huge corporation. I don't know if that's really a good standard to go by, or not. But, that's how I made my decision.

I have a vague notion that Xdrive was a start-up company that was recently acquired by AOL. As opposed to being developed by AOL from the beginning. It probably wouldn't hurt if I did a little research in this area.

You have to sign up with AOL's screen name service to get an account. I already have an AOL screen name (or several) with my AIM name.

I signed up for the free Xdrive service which includes five gigabytes of storage space. For $9.95 a month, you can get ten times that much. For my purposes, at home, 5 gigabytes is more than enough.

I downloaded the desktop version. What can I say. It's not exactly your basic Windows interface. At least, not the kind of interface I'm used to. There's a basic option and an advanced. I'm using the advanced. I'm not going to give a tutorial here because I don't really know how I finally figured out how to use it as a back-up.

So far, I'm only using it to back up my digital photographs. I backed up for a couple hours last night and tonight. After backing up about 2,000 photos, I've only used a very small portion of the 5 GB. You want to have at least a DSL connection to the internet. I can't imagine doing this on a dial-up. Cable would probably be faster.

You can set it to back-up certain things automatically. I'm doing two backup sets. One set I created for files and folders that I know I'm never going to edit or change again. So, I've set that to never back-up again. The other is for my current photo files and folders that I'm still adding to and editing. This I have scheduled to do an incremental backup once a week.

I've wanted to try an online backup service for a long time. So far, Xdrive looks pretty good for my purposes. I'm quite pleased. Sorry this isn't really a very good review or critique of the service for somone trying to decide whether to use Xdrive or not. Like I said, I really don't know how I figured it out. Maybe the more technologically advanced and articulate Krupo will take it for a ride and give us a better review. (hint)

One word of caution, as usual. Do not use any online system to backup sensitive of confidential documents or files. Or, if you do, consider all the risks first. This is something I talk about every time I mention any online service, and I can't emphasize enough.

• Posted by: Marie Carnes at 11:53 PM
• 535 words in this article
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• Filed in: Links | Thinking outloud | Tips - Other | Web 2.0

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Comments

Posted by: Krupo at September 17, 2006 10:12 PM

Posted by: Marie at September 17, 2006 10:24 PM

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