Elephant Drive Online Backup Review
Overall Rating
Overall, ElephantDrive is an intuitive system that isn’t an overbearing weight on your system, the way most other online storage solutions and file sharing programs are. If there was any degradation in application speed, it certainly wasn’t noticeable after installing and having the software go about backing up all the files of our selected systems.
ElephantDrive requires the latest version of Java to be installed on your system, in order for the 11MB executable file to be installed. More and more desktop applications are requiring Java, so you may already have the latest update. If not you can find the latest update through your favorite web search engine.
The desktop app, coupled with the simple, easy to use web interface makes for a service that you can get started with right away, if you’re needing to deploy a backup solution, without having to sacrifice anything in the way of security or features.
As a side note, ElephantDrive picked up many of the displaced X Drive users in 2008 (when AOL sold the company along with several other of its businesses); the migration of those users has since completed, with many picking up subscriptions.
Features
Whenever and wherever the cloud’s concerned, security is of the foremost. And it’s of the utmost priority with this service. It features 128 bit SSL file transfers, what many of the top branded banks, government agencies, and many of the other web services that you rely on, depend on; and before transmission of files, data is encrypted with the advanced 256-bit AES standard. Sometimes, security comes at a price (usually in the way of application speed and experience quality), but nothing seemed to be lacking here.
The main way that you interact with the ElephantDrive cloud is through the firm’s desktop app, ElephantDesktop Manager, which is basically just a square of links to four modules of function and operation: Manage Backups, View Activity, Access Files, Disable Activity.
Manage Backups and View Activity take you to a Backup Jobs and Progress Report, respectively, which shows you a very intuitive itemized list of the statuses of various backup jobs. Surprisingly, the desktop utility got to work very quickly, and immediately various categories were well into the progress of scanning and uploading to the cloud, before we even got to the screen.
The workhorse application is ElephantExplorer. If you you’re comfortable with windows on the Mac, or Windows Explorer on the PC, you’ll feel right at home with ElephantExplorer. It’s a quadrant layout, with the top half being the cloud or rather ElephantDrive, and the bottom half being your local computer.
The application worked very well; you see the files transferring in real time from bottom to top; and if you want to preempt a backup job, you can do so by electing to manually backup select files that you want to prioritize, simply by dragging files from the local (bottom part of ElephantExplorer) to the top destination folder on the ElephantDrive server.
The Disable Activity button on ElephantDesktop Manager is sort of like a kill switch to the whole show. If you wanted to cease and desist all transfers right away, this would be your button. We tested it out, and it worked fine.
A nice feature to the service, which not too many online backup solutions offer, is what they’re calling the TrunkDrive (sticking with the elephant theme). The TrunkDrive exists on your local explorer, and perceives it to be something like an external hard drive.
This feature has obvious uses and purposes. A longer document that you’re working on, you may want to save on the TrunkDrive, to ensure that you have the latest and most current version of the project file, because the TrunkDrive stays in sync across all the computers that ElephantDrive is installed on. We actually found ourselves moving more and more of our work to the TrunkDrive as we tested the service, because of the convenience that the feature affords.
Another cool feature that we found very useful that isn’t found on most online backup solutions and services is the very effective search function. In one fell swoop, you can search through all of your files across all fo the computers being backed up. So say you wrote up a quick memo, but saved it on one of your computers to finish later, but you can’t remember if you saved it on the laptop for work, or your personal laptop, or your desktop in the den. Type in a quick search, and the file’s found for you; you can either access over the web, or get to it on the local computer that the web result says it’s located on.
File Sharing
File sharing is relatively limited with this service. There are other services that allow, for example, direct publishing from the file’s menu of options of actions. But with ElephantDrive, you’re going to find that the main way to share is by email addressing, email invitation. And the function pretty much works the same way on the desktop app as it does on the web app, which is: you find the file that you want to share; then click on the share option, and then you’re allowed 3 email recipients.
Support
Support is sort of limited here, as you won’t find live support either online or via a hotline. You’re largely dependent on the knowledge base, which is actually pretty thorough, and includes quite a bit of history. You’ll get pretty extensive threads on each topic.
There’s also the support forum, and to keep abreast of developments, there’s the company blog.
There is the option of emailing support as well, which is a plain vanilla email, with the direct email address actually listed on the website. (They must get a lot of SPAM?)
But overall, the service worked as purported, and tech support should pretty much be covered by the content that’s available through the company website.
Price
Pricing falls under two categories of services, which are the Home Edition category, and the Pro Edition category. In either category, a prospective customer can elect to trial the service before he actually purchases a service subscription. Plans for Home Users start at $4.95 per month, while Business Users’ plans start at $34.95 per month.
The biggest difference between the Home and Pro accounts is the ability to administer multiple computers, multiple accounts and multiple versions of files. With the top of the line Pro account, the Pro Plus Edition service, what you get is up to 2 TB of storage, which protects up to 20 different workstations.
An interesting note: the Home accounts are listed to have “unlimited storage,” while the Pro services are limited to 1 TB and 2 TB for Pro Plus. Why they limit Pro and not Home, is unclear. But it’s there. Also, on the Home Edition, there’s a file limit of 1 GB (you’re not going to be able to back up very much single file HD video); and for Home Plus, you’re limited to 2 GB per file.
If you go with the full year subscription for any of the services, ElephantDrive is throwing in 2 free months. That’s enticing, but a 15 day trial can go by quick, and may not be long enough for you to make a decision on about a full year or to go for the monthly rate. So you may want to plan and schedule for your trial a bit
When to go with a Pro account, versus a Home account
If you’re working within a group that’s working in the same file, you’ll want to go with a Pro account. This reason this sort of collaboration is preferential to the Pro account is that this category of service offers automatic backups of open files. With the Home services, the backup software’s going to wait until the file’s closed for editing, until the backup’s made; this is less intensive on resources both on your local end, as well as ElephantDrive’s end.
If you’re working within a group, and you’re needing to limit the interactions of certain users with certain files, you’re going to want to go with a Pro account that can administer sub accounts, and most likely want to go with the Pro Plus account, which enables a standard set of permissions to be checked on or off per user.
If you are a current Elephant Drive user please leave your own review, thoughts, comments and ratings below for others to see. That way people don’t have to only take our word for it.
No Customer Reviews
Leave a review