The previous commenter was correct, there is no such thing as free.

Besides that, Xdrive and Streamload seem like nothing more than Hotmail 1.0 with better attachment management.

I can’t respond to each AOL (Geo Hunt / xDrive) point since the post was mostly a biased attempt at appearing to be a fair comparative analysis. But I will state that EMBARQ Media Safe is much more than a Backup service and does not require desktop software.

EMBARQ Media Safe - providing 25GB of free storage - is a powerful, yet easy-to-use online storage and sharing service to store, access, and share your videos, photos, music, and other files. EMBARQ Media Safe provides desktop software to easily manage your uploads & downloads, create backups and to keep all your digital media in sync! Also, beyond a high-volume, secure storage service, EMBARQ Media Safe provide various easy-to-use sharing methods; hosting for your web site or Blog, Inbox for social sharing with no download-limit impacts, or Linked for email sharing. As the EMBARQ Media Safe does have download limits there are very cost affordable subscription plans for the needs you may have from an online storage and sharing solution.

Try it for yourself – EMABRQ Media Safe was created for the needs of today’s high-volume digital media consumer – visit http://mediasafe.embarq.com today!

You are correct… Total web-storage is the a future goal. I’m willing to bet that in 10-20 years, broadband will be just as common and reliable as electricity (remember, electricity wasn’t always reliable).

You are also correct regarding syncing of data… That would even work in an enterprise environment that relies on local machines communicating data with a main server - if that server is out (or the notebook is out of range), caching should be enables.

The real challenge for remote storage is better local storage with redundancy built in , my new laptop has two slots for solid state drives and together they can store almost 100% of my data.

As soon as there is a main brand laptop with raid, low weight, good autonomy an huge solid state data cards (CF or SD) I getting it.

At that stage my data is easily accessible and transportable and that’s when remote data will need to turn a feature set in to real consumer benefits.

I’ve tried streamload and found it lacking and not delivering all the functionality it promises.

I’m using carbonite and using it for what it is, a backup service: I would like it to do more (web access to stored files) but still keep it’s simplicity which is good
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I have just subscribed to XDrive plus (50GB) but uninstalled as I think it was interfering with IE.

I’m sure that the access to fast ADSL (I’ve got 32MB) will accelerate the change and market consolidation

I’m sure very soon, within 12 months, these suppliers will offer a feature set that suits most users and at rock bottom price: I don’t envy you Gio!

They’ve also come clean a little more about bandwidth utilization. A while back they touted the heck out of the storage but didn’t tell you anything about the amount of data you were allowed to download w/the free accounts.

A post in the other story about Amazon’s S3 storage option is one I’m looking into. The price is right, but it seems extremely odd that they don’t offer even a crude way to use their service themselves. It seems you’re stuck on writing on for yourself or using one of the hacked up ones others have written.

Those are all concerns that will fade with time. People had to get over similar fears about using the phone, using e-commerce solutions, etc..

“Data everywhere” is the future. You should be able to plug in a stereo receiver, punch in your username, and have all of your music media right there. You should be able to plug in your DVR, punch in your username, and access all of your stored video. You should be able to turn on your PDA and have unlimited storage and access to all of your data. You should be able to have your browser settings universal (bookmarks, etc.)…

Instead of develop all of these “web-applications”, the real focus should be on creating a truly unique and centralized data platform that will interact with all existing data platforms. Just as there is ONE internet with a bunch of different servers, there should be ONE storage platform with a bunch of different providers (Amazon, Google, XDrive, etc.).

Like it or not, most data will reside remotely and it will be of great benefit.

Protect your Data!

It would also make it alot easier for device engineers to connect to a users account to stream things like mp3’s, backend platform for cellular devices (pda’s), etc..

Instead, we are seeing segments… We have XDrive, Amazon S3, Streamload, Google, etc.. This is a market where centralization is actually a good thing.

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And I agree with Mike that large Internet players will have some advantage here, smaller players will need to hit niches as usual.

Well, I’ll admit I’m biased because I’m the General Manager of Xdrive.

But I really think you guys should check out Xdrive more. http://www.xdrive.com

A lot of these other services being discussed, including Carbonite, are just BACKUP services. And, if all you are interested in is backing up your data, I suppose they work fine. But most of them require you to download and install client software.

Xdrive is much more – it’s an online drive service. It’s like always having a network drive available, so you can get to your data and your files from anywhere using only a browser. There’s no client software required to use the service.

However, if you do download our Xdrive software, then you can actually mount the online storage as a real drive in Windows and drag and drop files to it and use it as if it were live storage on your computer. You can open and edit files directly from your “X:” drive. You can even upload your music to Xdrive and then stream it to yourself on any computer.

And you can’t really beat our pricing — 5GB for free. Period. Without any limitation on bandwith utilization. (Most of the other services out there which say they are free, including Streamload and AMD Live all put some limits on how much you can upload or download. But, Xdrive has NO limits on usage!)

You can also use Xdrive to share files — any of your files or folders you put on Xdrive can then be shared with your friends. And there’s no file-size limit on sharing. So, Xdrive is really a much better solution for sharing large files than email, where even the best email services limit you to 16MB or so. I use the service myself to share huge folders of photos and videos with my family. These are things I wanted to share privately, not by creating a public website — so Xdrive was perfect for this.

And of course, Xdrive does have a full-featured backup functionality available too. So, even if BACKUP is all you care about, Xdrive will work well as your solution. But if you really want to take advantage of all the other things you can do with your files online, then Xdrive is really the way to go.

I haven’t found any other service that offers ALL of the above stuff — let alone any other service that is FREE !! Come, try it out.