MyOtherDrive Online Backup Review
Overall Rating
Online backup, storage, and sharing services are all the rage, and they definitely run the gamut. On one end, you sort of have the shoddier services that are free and are supported by less tasteful advertisements than you would care to be caught seen with. On the other end, there are these class-A quality services that really tailor their systems to suit enterprises (you know, the Fortune 500 class of companies).
What we’ve found in MyOtherDrive is a thorough service with many features, that’s more than just a middle ground; it’s a versatile solution. We’ve reviewed products and services that have a bunch of one sort of feature, like backing up, but are weak on say a feature set for sharing. But with MyOtherDrive, what you’ll find is that there’s a good deal to work with in all areas, not just backing up, security, and sharing, but collaboration as well. We’ll talk about some of the niftier features of this service, such as the ability to actually mail in internal hard drives to the company, to have the data uploaded at the source, as opposed to draining your poor coax cable’s bandwidth to back up your collection of HD movies to the cloud.
Features
Before you get started, it’s worth saying that off the bat, it’s encouraged by this reviewer, as well as by the company, MyOtherDrive itself, to interact with the cloud services’ servers via its client, as opposed to using the Manage My Files feature on the website. That isn’t to say that the website’s features aren’t adequate or somehow not able to handle the jobs of backing up and sharing files; it definitely can, it’s just that the desktop client’s a good deal more convenient. Here are some other points that we’ve drawn conclusions to and that the company also notes that we also agree with:
#1. The desktop app provides a good deal more screen space; websites are notorious for this. And one of our pet peeves is actually toolbars that clutter the browser’s screen real estate.
#2. Also, without the browser, there’s less memory that’s being used; again, the company and this reviewer has the user with scarce resources in mind here.
#3. We’ve found with our tests of the services provided, that they just run faster with the desktop app
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The one thing you’ll need in order to get started with the desktop app, though, is the latest version of Java. Most sites and many applets (such as those found on social networking sites) do actually require Java, so chances are, you probably already have the most current version.
One thing you’ll want to keep in mind about this service is that, from the get go, you’ll notice that things just operate a bit differently than you might be used to with other online storage services. Other backup services, for example, upon installation of the desktop app, set about backing up the files automatically from your PC. That’s one huge plus for us about this service, its that the program forces you to tell the service what to backup, and where to put those files. (Another plus that we forgot to mention earlier is that by using Java to build the desktop app, what you get is a really fast and a really light desktop app; this is rare amongst desktop apps that usually tend to be pretty hefty, with an average file size of 12 MB. With this Java applet you’re downloading a file that’s less than 1 MB, and it’s still pretty robust.)
MyOtherDrive forces you to set up a schedule for backing up; we found this to be very desirable, since we’re operating within the context of “scarce resources.” With other services, you find that backing up takes place, regardless of your input, and when your connection and application experience degrades, you’re left wondering if it’s the backup service or not. With MyOtherDrive, since you set up the rules, you don’t have to wonder; you know when what is being backed up to where. Bandwidth is firmly under control. Nothing sneaky going on here.
File Sharing
We found that this service’s file sharing capabilities were equally strong. The service is surprisingly social, with the profile page to the service actually looking more like a social networking service’s than an online storage and file sharing service’s. The company’s managed to carve out a clear focus with its web operation, which is a pet peeve of ours: with other services, you’re not sure what can or can’t be done on either the desktop app or the web apps. Here, with MyOtherDrive, what you find is that the web is mainly for socializing: sharing files, collaborating, and posting public files.
You can certainly share files and set up permissions on a per folder or per file basis from the desktop app, but especially when it comes to sharing public files, we generally found that we needed to refer to the web anyway, to cut and paste over URLs and other things into other social networking services, so we ended up finding that the web really suited sharing more than anything else. (Besides, the company itself promoted the desktop app for backing up and uploading.)
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Support
Though through our testing we never found the actual need to look for support, we were a bit disappointed to find that support was pretty scant. Granted, there was a lot of content, and when we read through the help files, we did find a lot of technical detail (maybe even too much information), but there isn’t any social piece to the support; there aren’t forums for example. Basically, the knowledge base consists of very thorough text files, and though the “support” and help may be there in all that text, it’s hard to read through, and the presentation of it all was pretty drab. That’s about our only gripe with the service actually, was the presentation and lack of features when it came to support.
Price
The good thing about MyOtherDrive is that it offers a free account. Yes, it’s ad supported, but you don’t experience the sort of obvious degradation in service quality with the free account that you do with other run of the mill online backup services. But that isn’t to say we weren’t swayed by the premium accounts. We certainly were.
The best savings, we found, was with the Enterprise account, which start at about $240 per TB per year. The savings increase as you opt for more TBs, but that’s what it starts at. The pricing’s pretty self explanatory, as the services pretty much only differ by the amount that you can back up, and nothing more. Support, bandwidth and the like aren’t cut in Pro account, for instance. Though you won’t get unlimited parallel downloads (simultaneous downloads) with the free account (perfectly reasonable).
For those on stiffer budgets, you’ll find the starter package, the Pro 100 GB service plan to be very affordable at $4.99 (cheaper than most drive-through fast food value meals).
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