Grab Free Desktop Syncing Plus 25GB Storage Space on Box (Lifehacker 2012-08-15)

[IainB]

May be a limited time special offer: If you want a 25Gb Box (Box.com), then they are going FREE (and you can add the Sync capability) for new users - I was unable to convert/upgrade my existing 2Gb Box to 25Gb.
Grab Free Desktop Syncing Plus 25GB Storage Space on Box
(Copied below sans hyperlinks.)

Aug 15, 2012 9:30 AM   
Grab Free Desktop Syncing Plus 25GB Storage Space on Box
Melanie Pinola   

Box is one of the more generous of the online storage services—especially if you got in on one of the free 50GB deals previously offered. However, syncing wasn't offered for personal users—until, it seems, now. Here's how to get Box syncing without a business account.

Slickdeals member mfaraday noticed a "Get BOX Sync" option under the "My Account" tab. This provides the Box Sync app (for PC or Mac). So, first log into your account at Box.com and click on "My Account" in the menu to see if the syncing option is there.

If it's not there for you (it wasn't for me), don't worry. Apparently new users are getting the feature. If you can get an invite for 50GB free from someone, you can set up a new account and should see the syncing option (You might even be able to send a 50GB invite to yourself from your account—as long as you don't have a commercial email address like Gmail or Yahoo).

If you don't have access to another 50GB offer, Slickdeals user BSGjunkie offers this link for 25GB:
https://www.box.com/...ignup/o/hellosign_25

I set up a new account via that link and now have desktop syncing plus the 25GB storage space (normally free accounts come with just 5GB. Although it does suck to go down from the 50GB promo, syncing may be a fine tradeoff.).

Install the syncing app and then just like Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive, you'll have a new folder in your Windows Explorer/Finder for Box Documents. Note that the max file limit is just 100MB.

Because it's unclear how long this will be available, jump on it now if you're interested.

[rgdot]

Got mine couple of hours ago, had never signed up for Box, so far so good

[Jibz]

Looks like it still has the 100 MB file size limit of the free 5 GB account. May not be a problem for most people, but worth noting .

[Attronarch]

Thank you for notification, grabbed it!

Haven't made any research about the security of Box, should I encrypt it with TrueCrypt?

[IainB]

Thank you for notification, grabbed it!
Haven't made any research about the security of Box, should I encrypt it with TrueCrypt?

-Attronarch (August 16, 2012, 03:45 PM)

You are welcome.
Good question. I too was thinking I would encrypt it with TrueCrypt.

[IainB]

This offer is still working with 25Gb free today 2012-08-18 1301hrs (NZT).

[40hz]

I already have the 50Gb account without syncing feature. I just grabbed one of these 25Gb accounts and all works as advertised. Nice deal.

[kyrathaba]

Regarding large-capacity backup services, anyone checked-out Amazon Glacier?

[Jibz]

I was actually just looking at that, it seems like it would be awesome and cheap for storing data in the size range of normal consumer backups.

But it is almost impossible to work out how much it would cost to retrieve all your data at once in case of emergency -- some of the comments on HN suggest it could be very expensive.

I guess we can hope it will bring down the prices of other online services.

You are charged a retrieval fee when your retrievals exceed your daily allowance. If, during a given month, you do exceed your daily allowance, we calculate your fee based upon the peak hourly usage from the days in which you exceeded your allowance. As we saw above, if you store 12 terabytes of data in Amazon Glacier, you can retrieve up to 20.5 gigabytes for free each day. If you exceed 20.5 gigabytes during a given day (or days) over the course of the month, we determine the hour during those days in which you retrieved the most amount of data for the month. In this example, let’s say your peak hourly retrieval rate is 1 gigabyte per hour, and the amount you retrieved that day is 24 gigabytes.

Peak hourly retrieval for the month = 1 gigabyte per hour

Next we subtract your free allowance from the peak hourly retrieval for the month. To determine the amount of data you get for free, we look at the amount of data retrieved during your peak day and calculate the percentage of data that was retrieved during your peak hour. We then multiply that percentage by your free daily allowance. In this example, you retrieved 24 gigabytes during the day and 1 gigabyte at the peak hour, which is 1/24 or ~4% of your data during your peak hour. We multiply 4% by your daily free allowance, which is 20.5 gigabytes each day. This equals 0.82 gigabytes. We then subtract your free allowance from your peak usage to determine your billable peak.

Billable peak hourly retrieval = Peak hourly retrieval - Free retrieval hourly allowance

Billable peak hourly retrieval = 1 gigabyte - 0.82 gigabytes = 0.18 gigabytes

The amount you pay is your billable peak, multiplied by the number of hours in the month, multiplied by the retrieval fee.

[Renegade]

Offer still looks good...

[IainB]

In a separate discussion here Re: Surfulater at BdJ today ($39.50), I made the comment that:

If Neville can make it so the cloud storage is under my control

-mwb1100 (November 23, 2012, 01:51 PM)

I haven't done this with Surfulater, but I presume you would be able to put it "in the Cloud" already like most other databases - by using a CloudDrive - e.g., (say) Google Drive, Box.net, SkyDrive, or similar.
I'm not sure, but I presume that if you put into the local (PC-based) Google Drive folder a reparse point (Junction folder) that links to the surfulater database folder on the PC, then presumably up the the pipe its contents would go, and after every change also. Then you could access that folder from the CloudDrive via other PCs.
I shall try it out and see when I have some time later today.

-IainB (November 23, 2012, 06:10 PM)

...I'm not sure, but I presume that if you put into the local (PC-based) Google Drive folder a reparse point (Junction folder) that links to the surfulater database folder on the PC, then presumably up the the pipe its contents would go, and after every change also.

-IainB (November 23, 2012, 06:10 PM)

Well, I tried that, but it doesn't seem to work - though it should work. This probably means that the folders in the Google Drive directory on the PC do not necessarily have all the characteristics of directories - or at least not as Junction or reparse points. However, the thing seems to work OK if you put it around the other way - i.e., if you put your Junction/reparse point as the working folder for your database to access, with the link going to an ordinary folder in the Google Drive directory.

There's one particular caveat I'd make about this: If you are using Google Drive, it might muck about with your data in a couple of ways - one is destructive, the other is excessive duplication:
(a) Convert some of your files into Google docs format, without telling you and without leaving you a backout option.
(b) Duplicate/triplicate etc. your files if you had them multi-labelled (it did this on changeover from "labels" to "folders", and without any warning as far as I could see.

What this really means is that you can't rely on the security of your data on Google drive. - the greatest risk being from Google themselves.