Author Topic: Jungle Disk Mini-Review: offsite data storage (Read 67,281 times)

justice · « **on:** June 17, 2008, 10:28 AM »

Basic Info

App Name	JungleDisk
App URL	http://www.jungledisk.com/
App Version Reviewed	Current Beta Version: Jungle Disk 2.0 Beta 4 [1.99d] (Released May 30, 2008) + optional Jungle Disk Plus service
Test System Specs	OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Enterprise Service Pack 1 Build 6001 System Manufacturer Apple Inc. Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz, 2000 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s) Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB
Supported OSes	Windows 2000 or later (Windows XP SP2 recommended) Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later Linux x86 with KDE or GNOME desktop (GTK2 libraries) Portable USB version (all platforms) Windows Home Server specific version Some Source code is available! Workgroup edition is in development
Support Methods	Manual, Blog, Getting Started Videos, Support Forums, Account Management, Email. All support for Jungle Disk is provided through the forums. Billing, product feedback, press and business e-mail options are available.
Upgrade Policy	Jungle Disk software for all three platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux) Rights to install the software on an unlimited number of machines with a single S3 account Lifetime free upgrades A 30-day money back guarantee
Trial Version Available	The Jungle Disk Software is free to download and use for 30 days.
Pricing Scheme	$20 to purchase Jungle Disk. Optional Jungle Disk Plus service, which adds browser-based access to your files and other features for $1 per month. Additional monthly Amazon S3 fees apply.
Reviewer Donation Link	Donate to Justice, the Reviewer
Screencast Video URL	http://jungledisk.com/manual/screencast.shtml
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	none, bought the software and been using it for 4 months.

Intro:
Jungle Disk (from now on JD) is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com's S3 ™ Storage Service. Unlike other services, with Amazon S3 ™ there is no minimum and no maximum amount of data you can store. You pay only for the actual amount of storage you are using. It supports 256-AES encryption if desired.

In practice it's possible to access the JD drive as a mapped network drive in explorer, over WebDav or via the local http server (JD Plus). JD keeps a local cache of 1GB by default which allows most operations to be instantaneous with any changes being made transparently in the background. There's an inbuilt backup utility included which works well and previous versions are kept if desired. This approach makes JD suitable for backup purposes as well as temporary file storage or as an remote filesystem as it will work with native copy tools such as robocopy, sync tools such as SyncToy and SFFS etc. Block level incremental backup is supported through JD plus, as well as web access (access anywhere via browser via jungle disk's website)

Version 2 (in development and tested here) includes some excellent refinements, partly based on user feedback, these include but are not limited to (see release notes):

New User Interface
Support for new Jungle Disk 2.0 buckets as well as Compatibility buckets, which can be shared with other S3 tools
Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time
Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling
Expanded bandwidth limiting feature
New Previous Versions features
Verify MD5 hash on downloads (as well as upload)

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justice · « **Reply #1 on:** June 17, 2008, 10:33 AM »

Oh if you want screenshots of advanced options or other functionality let me know and i'll ad them to the bottom of the first post. It's also my first proper mini-review

TucknDar · « **Reply #2 on:** June 17, 2008, 10:42 AM »

Great review, and ironically I just (as in yesterday) purchased a license for JD. Personally I'm actually not using it's built-in backup facilities, rather I'm using SyncBackSE to sync/backup through JD which works pretty well, and gives me more options for the backup-specifics.

It's great to be able to just open up the mapped drive in Total Commander and copy some files and feel that "ah, that's them backed up and safe". And the price to pay to Amazon I suspect will be minimal with my usage.

Just a minor suggestion for the review, list the price of JD somewhere easily visible (it's $20, btw).

justice · « **Reply #3 on:** June 17, 2008, 10:50 AM »

Thanks

Can't believe I forgot the price. haha. Added under Pricing Scheme.

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** June 17, 2008, 10:51 AM »

Great review

justice · « **Reply #5 on:** June 17, 2008, 11:14 AM »

Thanks mouser. I added in a line or two to emphasize that JD does incremental backup by default, and block level incremental backup if you buy the JD Plus service, which also allows web access via Jungle Disk's website (doesn't require your pc to be on). Worth $1 a month for me.

tomos · « **Reply #6 on:** June 17, 2008, 11:25 AM »

great review Justice, thanks

Quote from: justice on June 17, 2008, 11:14 AM

the JD Plus service ... allows web access via Jungle Disk's website (doesn't require your pc to be on)

-
how do you mean "doesn't require your pc to be on" -
do you mean it makes your S3/Amazon account accessible from other pc's?

justice · « **Reply #7 on:** June 17, 2008, 11:31 AM »

Yes, it makes your amazon account accessible from any pc via jungle disk's website as opposed to making your local jungle disk installation accessible over the the web if I understand correctly.

cthorpe · « **Reply #8 on:** June 30, 2008, 05:24 PM »

Jungle Disk 2.0 (Final) was just released. It is a free upgrade for registered users. The original review was for the beta of this release, but for anyone who balked at using a beta for critical backups, you can rest easy now.

Quote from: http://blog.jungledisk.com/2008/06/23/jungle-disk-desktop-20-released/

Jungle Disk 2.0 includes major upgrades in functionality, performance, and ease of use. Here are some of the highlights:

* New User Interface
o New first-time setup wizard makes setup a snap
o New configuration dialog to organize our growing list of features
o New backup preview dialog so you can see exactly what will be backed up
o New backup selection dialog makes it faster and easier to set up automatic backup
* Support for new Jungle Disk 2.0 buckets
o Instantly rename files and directories
o Optionally encrypt file & directory names
o Change encryption key (bucket password) for existing files instantly
o Unlimited number of buckets supported
* Support for Compatibility buckets, which can be shared with other S3 tools
* Support for European S3 buckets (note: Jungle Disk Plus not supported)
* Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time
* Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling
* Expanded bandwidth limiting feature
o Applies to both network drive and automatic backup traffic
o Set limits on both upload and download rates
o Change limits on the fly
o Set schedules for limits
* New Previous Versions features
o Set minimum and maximum number of previous versions to keep
o Exclude file types and directories from previous versions
o Customize previous version settings on a per-backup-job basis
* New command line options to integrate with external task schedulers and batch jobs
* Greatly improved performance for large directories and large cache sizes
* ..and much more!

tomos · « **Reply #9 on:** July 02, 2008, 03:58 PM »

I'm just after installing Jungle Disk & opening an account with Amazon
Opening amazon a/c is a bit confusing -
I thought I was just signing up for S3 & was faced with a list of services with no S3 in sight till I figured it's "Amazon Simple Storage Service" (I presume!)

my question is
Anyone in Europe using American storage for S3 ?
-
The American storage is a lot cheaper but they do say that the European will give better performance in Europe..
If the American storage is atall passable I'll probably go with that cause I will be loading lots of GB's
although looking again it's 13c(US) more expensive per GB in Europe which wont break the bank...

edit/ corrected my sums

cthorpe · « **Reply #10 on:** July 02, 2008, 04:22 PM »

Well, unless you plan on constantly moving a lot of data the lower performance shouldn't be too much of an issue. Just schedule Jungle Disk to do the transfers when you aren't on your computer. When I first installed it, I transferred about 2 gigs worth of data over the first couple of days. Since then, I only move a few MB per day.

Carl

tomos · « **Reply #11 on:** July 02, 2008, 04:29 PM »

Quote from: cthorpe on July 02, 2008, 04:22 PM

Well, unless you plan on constantly moving a lot of data the lower performance shouldn't be too much of an issue. Just schedule Jungle Disk to do the transfers when you aren't on your computer. When I first installed it, I transferred about 2 gigs worth of data over the first couple of days. Since then, I only move a few MB per day.

thanks Carl

rebooting now for the drive remapping

mwb1100 · « **Reply #12 on:** July 02, 2008, 05:12 PM »

Quote from: tomos on July 02, 2008, 03:58 PM

my question is
Anyone in Europe using American storage for S3 ?

I'd suggest doing some research before using the European S3 servers with JungleDisk (on the JD website/forums). I know that Euro S3 servers were not supported initially, and I believe that there are still some items that are not supported (I think that JD Plus currently does not support the European servers).

tomos · « **Reply #13 on:** July 02, 2008, 05:43 PM »

true mwb1100
the Plus version is not supported by the european servers - I've opted for the american ones now so wont go back unless things very sluggish or something

hmm
a straight forward copy/ drag n drop of files in DOpus results in new modified date - is that the norm -
using SFFS the files keep their original modified dates (I've no experience with online backup or with networks even

)
I'm reasonably used to SFFS so probably wont use Jungle Disk as the actual backup software

tomos · « **Reply #14 on:** July 02, 2008, 09:07 PM »

looking around a bit in Amazon S3 -
it's not very accessible without Jungle Disk is it!? (well, it took a while to even figure out I was already logged in)
Make that pretty much totally inaccessible (to me at any rate..)

If you have Super Flexible File Synchronizer & can figure out how to create a "Bucket" (basically your folder/file container) in S3,
it seems easy to use SFFS to backup directly to S3
(in Advanced Mode, create or edit a profile and click on the "Internet..." button. Change drop-down setting from ftp to Amazon S3. More details here)
- I'm not sure if Partial file update is supported.

Will probably get Jungle Disk anyway cause I think it allows SFFS to use partial file update
Also, it's great to be able to browse your backups & keep an overview and have it all so accessible

mwb1100 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 03, 2008, 12:43 AM »

Quote from: tomos on July 02, 2008, 09:07 PM

lWill probably get Jungle Disk anyway cause I think it allows SFFS to use partial file update
Also, it's great to be able to browse your backups & keep an overview and have it all so accessible

I'm not sure whether or not JungleDisk will allow SFFS partial file update to work (but it might). Usually partial file update requires some corresponding software running on the server, but maybe SFFS can get around this somehow by keeping a database on the local machine.

What I do know is that with JD Plus you get partial file update automatically (but JD Plus is an additional 1.00 per month). JD Plus runs the server component on the Amazon EC2 service, so the local JD software communicates to the JD Plus server (and you pay for that bandwidth, which should never be more than what you'd pay to directly store or retrieve a file directly from S3). The JD Plus server then deals with the S3 storage, but Amazon does not charge transaction or bandwidth fees for EC2 access to S3.

tomos · « **Reply #16 on:** July 04, 2008, 08:24 AM »

It seems that SFFS cannot do partial file update at the moment with Amazon S3
(If I get a chance I'll try it via Jungle Disk & report back)

The Jungle Disk Plus threshold for "Block-level file updates" is 1MB which is very good
If, for example you're tagging photos it could be very helpful

Apparently a lot of people use the Block-level file update for True Crypt containers - anyone here doing that?

J-Mac · « **Reply #17 on:** July 12, 2008, 08:01 AM »

This looks pretty sweet, especially compared to another similar offer I received this week - Smugmug's "SmugVault Service". Smugmug is an online photo repository and what they are offering is storage on S3 for your RAW files, plus any other files you wish. However the storage and bandwidth pricing they offer is just about double what JD offers.

Gotta give it a try! Thanks for the great review, justice!

Jim

tomos · « **Reply #18 on:** July 12, 2008, 08:53 AM »

I've done a set it and forget it thingy -
every now & again I think omg I'd better double-check /compare folders in Dopus or whatever and everything's ~~looking~~ synchronised

I'm backing up my local backups - have everything already compressed & encrypted where necessary so I just synch it over

So easy

yes, thanks again Justice

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** July 12, 2008, 10:12 AM »

Can i remind people that one of the ways you can say thank you to Justice or any mini-review writer is by sending them a few of your donationcredits.

tomos · « **Reply #20 on:** July 20, 2008, 07:54 PM »

wasnt sure where to post this
Amazon S3 isnt functioning for a lot of people from all over - not sure if it's functioning at all actually

From a JungleDisk thread
http://forum.jungledisk.com/viewtopic.php?t=16281

According to amazon:

9:06 AM PDT We are currently experiencing elevated error rates with S3. We are investigating.
9:27 AM PDT We're investigating an issue affecting requests. We'll continue to post updates here.
9:48 AM PDT Just wanted to provide an update that we are currently pursuing several paths of corrective action.
10:13 AM PDT We are continuing to pursue corrective action.
10:33 AM PDT A quick update that we believe this is an issue with the communication between several Amazon S3 internal components. We do not have an ETA at this time but will continue to keep you updated.

ironically the JungleDisk forums are also experiencing difficulties

couldnt reply to thread myself/posts appearing dissapearing for others
is it all a sign

J-Mac · « **Reply #21 on:** July 21, 2008, 04:08 AM »

It's affecting me. I can't login to my S3 account nor JungleDisk Plus account at all. I didn't have any problems easlier, however, posting to the JD forum.

Jim

justice · « **Reply #22 on:** July 21, 2008, 07:08 AM »

First time this has happened as far as I know since s3 started. You can see the status of S3 at http://status.aws.amazon.com/ and it has affected every website using s3, not just JungleDisk and not something they will want to repeat I am sure. Should be fine now though and no data has been lost.

J-Mac · « **Reply #23 on:** July 21, 2008, 07:23 AM »

Yeah, I did see that page, justice. One of the mods on the JD forum posted it early Sunday night, EDT. Nice status page, BTW, though it is a little unclear as to the times of each update. Lots of updates, however, and lots of details. Pretty informative. I didn't see that before they posted it on the JD forum.

Thanks!

Jim

justice · « **Reply #24 on:** July 21, 2008, 08:07 AM »

If you want something more graphy then try http://cloudstatus.com/ it monitors the various services and shows you nice graphs and throughput.