Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

[wraith808]

Basic Info

App Name	ZumoDrive
App URL	http://www.zumodrive.com
App Version Reviewed	0.987
Test System Specs	Windows XP/iPhone 3GS
Supported OSes	Windows (XP/Vista/7), iPhone, Mac, Linux, Android, WebOS
Support Methods	Forum, Knowledge Base
Pricing Scheme	Free version (1GB + 1GB for completing tutorial) - Free.  10GB - $2.99/month, 25GB - $6.99/month, 50GB - $9.99/month, 100GB - $19.99/month, 200GB - $37.99/month.  500GB - 79.99/month.
Tour URL	https://www.zumodrive.com/tour/

App Name	Jungle Disk (Personal Desktop Edition)
App URL	http://www.jungledisk.com
App Version Reviewed	3.0.6
Test System Specs	Windows XP/iPhone 3GS
Supported OSes	Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Windows Server 2003/2008, iPhone, Mac OSX 10.5 or Later, Linux x86 with KDE or GNOME desktop (GTK2 libraries)
Support Methods	Forum, Knowledge Base, Ticket System
Pricing Scheme	$3/month + storage fees (see note below)
Other Notes	Also has a portable edition for all three desktop platforms

For a variety of reasons, I’m looking for a Cloud Storage Service.  At one time I was sure I would need two to satisfy my needs, as I need a service that syncs a local folder (preferably several) across machines.  I also need a online storage space for offsite backups- the ability to access it by WebDav is also a nice to have feature, so I can use my own backup software if I want.

Previously, for my first need, I evaluated SugarSync and Dropbox.  In the end, SugarSync was not recommended, as there are very bad issues with the product.  This was going to be a review of an online storage space that looked promising- ZumoDrive.  Then I remembered that I had a licensed copy of JungleDisk that I never used before, and realised that it satisfied both needs.  ZumoDrive comes close to satisfying both needs, but doesn’t quite do it.

ZumoDrive Configuration Screens

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

ZumoDrive Web Interface
Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

ZumoDrive Mobile Screens

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

The Good
ZumoDrive has a very functional interface, such as it is.  The configuration screens are well laid out and provide a lot of information, while never seeming overcrowded.  The mapped drives clearly show the information on a per-computer basis, so you can tell where the information that you're accessing is from.  The ability to change transfer speed is very welcome, and if you have space for it, the ease at which it integrates into your itunes library and your music in general is very welcome.  The web interface is simple, but allows you access to all of your files, and the sharing functionality is on par with the other options (it was actually better than DropBox for a while until the recent update which allows you to share files).  The iPhone interface looks familiar- I think that all of the options that I reviewed use a similar package for their iphone app.  Their dojo- the training area to the service- is actually quite well done also.

The Bad
The app seems to use an inordinate amount of memory; after having it open for a while, the usage was well over 100M, which seems a lot.  There were also a few hiccups in the beginning with the client being non-responsive, or duplicate clients being opened.  That is now fixed.  The integration with explorer is a bit misleading also- when I copied to the shared drive, the copy finished, but the files were not actually on the drive yet, and didn't show up on the web interface.  It appears that they are cached locally to be transferred, but when I went to look for them immediately, there was no indication of this until I looked in the transfer portion of the configuration dialog.  Also, for my purposes, the link folders bit was useless; it doesn't sync between machines, but instead syncs your local machine to the cloud.

Who is this app for
If you're not looking to sync your machines, but instead are looking for storage space in the cloud that is synced up to your various computers and can be shared, then this app will work for you.

JungleDisk Desktop Screens

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

JungleDisk Web Screen

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

JungleDisk Mobile Screens

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

The Good
JungleDisk is simple in it's approach, but very powerful.  It has many options for use, including syncing (to the desktop and other computers - a la DropBox), mapping drives (using your cloud drive like a local drive), and scheduled backups to the cloud.  Getting them setup is very easy, and the interfaces are pretty bare bones at their root, making them easy to navigate.  The pricing is dirt cheap for as much as you want to store, and it has the option of using your own Amazon S3 account, so you have full control over your data.  It's also one of the only services I've found as reliable as DropBox- I worry less and less as I use it about losing data, and actually have items exclusively on their service (cloud-wise) rather than redundantly backed up on DropBox as I've done with the others.  It also gives a lot of feedback as it has errors, but then re-tries until everything is fine, so the feedback it gives you thankfully don't have to use.  It also lets you effectively partition the amount of space you have for different uses, having the concept of drives, and then backing up things based on computer.  You can also sync arbitrary locations, which is a big plus.  Again, the iPhone interface looks familiar- I think that all of the options that I reviewed use a similar package for their iphone app.

The Bad
JungleDisk is definitely a geek's service- from setup to even billing.  The amount of options can get overwhelming if you want to change from the options set up in the wizard.  Even when not on advanced, the options that it gives you aren't for the faint of heart.  For long processes, the speed doesn't seem as fast as other options, though entirely useable.  The pricing is what initially threw me off from using it, and that trepidation still stands.  They charge you for reads, writes, uploads, downloads, storage... then you get charged by JungleDisk and by S3.  Add to that the fact that the web interface is an add-on, so you pay an additional $1 per month for it, and your invoices can get pretty involved.  Then again, even after using it for a while, I'm paying less than $3 a month, so those considerations fade in comparison to that.  Also, note that there are no sharing options with JungleDisk- it's your data, and only you can see it.

Pricing
Since the pricing of JungleDisk is so dissimilar to other offerings, I put it in its own separate area.  The basic price of JungleDisk is $3/month.  If you want web access, you add an additional $1/month.  On top of that, you pay a price for storage.

On Amazon, that price is as follows:
Amazon S3 US - only $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
First 5 GB Storage FREE

Data Transfer
FREE data uploaded until June 30, 2010! $0.10 per GB of data uploaded thereafter
$0.15 per GB of data downloaded

Data Request
$0.01 per 1000 upload requests
$0.01 per 10,000 download requests

An example invoice is below:
Mini-Review of JungleDisk and ZumoDrive

Note: This invoice does not include the $3/month because I bought JungleDisk way back when you could get it for a set price for unlimited use.

Who is this app for
If you like the cloud syncing/cloud back up services, but have too much data for their plans- JungleDisk is for you.  Even if you don't have a lot of data- JungleDisk will still work for you.  Only if you need to actually share that data will it not work for you.

Conclusions
ZumoDrive is slick, and has a lot of polish to the presentation.  However, if you need syncing abilities, know that they aren't there.  JungleDisk is cheap, reliable, and just works, with a lot of options for use to boot.  However, if you need to share your data, know that there are no options for that.

For my personal use, I'm going with a combination of DropBox, and JungleDisk.

[mouser]

Very helpful -- thank you for taking the time to write this 

[Paul Keith]

Thanks for the reviews wraith. If ever could you do one for Spider-Oak? That's the application I rarely heard reviews of although the ones I hear are good. (seems to share the same criticism as ZumoDrive as far as memory usage)

[jaden]

One note on JungleDisk - you can opt for storing your files on Rackspace instead of Amazon S3 and get free transfers up and down and pay the same as Amazon S3 for storage.  I did it a while ago and save a little each month.

[Curt]

thanks, wraith808 - a very fine way to mark your post # 1.000 ! 

[wraith808]

Can someone delete this?  I meant to modify my original post, and instead posted 

[skwire]

In case anybody has need, I wrote a JungleDisk cost calculator for Josh a while back:

https://www.donation....msg188038#msg188038

[tomos]

thanks again for the 'continuing story' wraith 

I always thought using Jungle Disk with Amazon S3 would have the advantage of being able to read the files via other apps - e.g. Cloudberry, or possibly amazon's new online 'Console'. But this is not the case - it's a garbled bunch of folders (here at any rate - disclaimer: I was using an older version of Jungle Disk till lately)

Have only recently started using the new version 5 of Super Flexible File Synchronizer (SFFS) to backup directly to Amazon S3.
I can check the results using the above mentioned means

I previously mentioned SFFS/S3 here, and Amazon's Console here (also Cloudberry mentioned in both those threads)

[TheQwerty]

JungleDisk is cheap, reliable, and just works, with a lot of options for use to boot.  However, if you need to share your data, know that there are no options for that.

-wraith808 (July 04, 2010, 05:17 PM)

This is correct that within JungleDisk there is no way to share files, but if you use the 'Compatible' disk format (at least for Amazon S3) you can use another tool like S3 Fox or Cloudberry Explorer to modify the ACL permissions so that the files are accessible by anyone or even behind passworded accounts.

So it is possible but Dropbox and others beat the pants off it for ease of sharing use.

I always thought using Jungle Disk with Amazon S3 would have the advantage of being able to read the files via other apps - e.g. Cloudberry, or possibly amazon's new online 'Console'. But this is not the case - it's a garbled bunch of folders

-tomos (July 06, 2010, 08:31 AM)

As I mentioned above if you use the old 'Compatible' disk format they should be accessible in other apps just fine, but you lose some of the Jungle Disk features.

More details on the differences here.



I really like Jungle Disk, but recently I've been considering making the move to Dropbox for most of my daily cloud needs and using Jungle Disk solely for the less often used backups.  The reason is simply that progress of Jungle Disk seems to have really slowed.

Since RackSpace acquired Jungle Disk they seem to have been primarily concentrating on getting their cloud service into a state closer to Amazon S3.  They also tend to be focusing on offering product(s) for reselling space/service instead of directly targetting the end-user.  They have an iOS app but I haven't seen any mention of Android.  I know they are making improvements but it's not necessarily on things I'd like to see (and I'm partly to blame for not actively requesting and pursuing changes, but I'm not doing so in Dropbox either).

Meanwhile, Dropbox already has iOS and Android apps allowing me to easily sync my KeePass database with my Nexus One.  They have the browser extensions so it should remain easy to access in Chrome OS and other netbook-geared OSes that make it more difficult to just install normal applications.  They recently announced developer APIs which I think could lead to some interesting features in the future.

My only reservations with Dropbox are:
1) The space seems costly, and I'm not a fan of refferrals so I haven't maxed out the free space.
2) I'd like a way to NOT sync some data to the local host(s); so I could download it from the cloud when needed but not necessarily waste local space on the item(s).

*shrugs* That's my (rather long) two-cents.

[JavaJones]

Great to see some more reviews in this area! Perhaps you can review Spider Oak and Humyo next? I have a client using Humyo and I have to say so far I think it's a very competitive service.

As far as Jungledisk being "dirt cheap", I'm not sure I agree. It really depends on how much data you have I guess. For smaller amounts of data, where one of the "big chunk" packages of something like Humyo are overkill (say you need 15GB and their minimum buy-in is 100GB), then yes with JungleDisk you might be saving money (15 cents/gb and assume transfer and access costs are negligible, you get $2.25/mo or $27/yr, but don't forget dashboard/web access costs...). Humyo is $70/yr for 100GB. So maybe you're able to cut that in half. But the advantage rapidly disappears as you reach around 30GB (if you include dashboard access and whatnot). Humyo gives you 100GB for just under $6/mo, and considering all the features are included that seems highly reasonable to me. Other services (e.g. Spideroak) are similar, and at data sizes over 30GB similarly beat Jungledisk.

Anyway, I hope to see more such comparisons as these kinds of services are increasingly interesting to me.

- Oshyan

[TheQwerty]

Jungle Disk just announced a new version in beta (v3.1) which will make public sharing easier.
http://blog.jungledi...ile-sharing-is-here/

[iphigenie]

I really like spideroak, it works fully on windows, mac and linux (I have it on slackware) - not that many do. The command line control has also come in very handy. There's also a nice control over what gets backedup, and over what is in the archive.

I have paid for the 100Gb plan.

I also use syncplicity - for sync of configs and files between home/work/game machines. It's just a lot faster to manage than spideroak for that one use case, although has a tendency to add things to the sync you didnt want (defaults to adding new folders automatically to its profile). I suspect that eventually this will switch to spideroak but haven't taken the time for it.

Will try to find the time to give a more structured pro/con

[Paul Keith]

@iphigenie, do you have a newbie guide on how to make spider-oak work using the command line? (I'm assuming this applies to Linux too)

The common complaint with Spider-Oak is that it takes more memory than Dropbox so this seems like a useful alternative for people wanting to get on with that program.

(That said, it's been so long since I opened my Spider-Oak software because unlike DropBox there's less of a reason to have it opened all the time since there's no convenient file manager integration)

[wurst]

I tried out JungleDisk as well as SpiderOak as I was looking for client-side encrypted cloudspace.
I was disappointed in both of them.
Spider-Oak was slow and I could never tell what the software was actually doing. JungleDisk was more transparent. Yet both have severe issues with special characters in filenames. I'm from Germany and we have umlauts (ä,ö,ü) and other weird characters (ß) which are part of our language. When cross-syncing between a PC and a Mac I ended up with duplicates for all files with special characters, half of them not accessible anymore. It was a big mess. I thought these special character issues should be gone, but they are not.
I went back to DropBox and now use Securstick (http://www.withopf.com/tools/securstick/) for client-side encryption as I wanted individual file/filename encryption instead of a fragile encrypted container (although plain Truecrypt works fine with Dropbox).

Duplicati (http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/) with plain S3 is also a contender for client-side encrypted cloudspace, but it's not out for Mac yet.