While using Mover earlier this week—an online service for transferring files from one cloud storage host to another—I investigated how much it would cost to buy extra bandwidth (the first 10 GB is free).
The answer was US $1.00 per GB, after a minimum of 10 GB.
How did I know that? Check out their user interface. I love it! It’s been styled like a store till receipt: a perfect example of using a real-world example in an online environment to immediately communicate meaning.
I love their attention to detail too, right down to the crinkled paper effect in the top left corner. Good work Mover team!
Today I’ve been using a third party web-based service called Mover to transfer the files from cloud to cloud, which is faster.
Before I go on, though, I just want to say thank you to everyone who used the referral URL https://copy.com/?r=SJuusn which gives both us an extra 5GB. My Copy account is now four times larger than a standard free, 15GB account—it is now a massive 60GB. Thank you.
Manual transfer
Obviously, the simplest option when migrating from one cloud-storage host to another would be to manually copy my files from the Dropbox folder to the Copy folder in My Documents.
I’ve done that with a few folders with only a handful of files in them, simply to judge the speed that Copy uploads them into the cloud.
The trouble with this method, however, is that on a domestic ADSL broadband connection my upload speed is significantly slower than my download speed; that’s what the ‘asymmetric’ bit of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) means.
Copying files from Dropbox folder to Copy folder, then uploading them into the cloud
Automated transfer
A faster method would be to transfer the files from my Dropbox account my Copy account in the cloud and then download them to my Copy folder on my PC, as my download speed is much faster.
It turns out that I’m not the only person to have thought of that. So this morning I signed up for a free account with Mover. The free account allows me to transfer up to 10GB of files from one service to another, after that it costs US$1.00 per GB (minimum of 10GB).
They support a wide range of services too:
Amazon S3
Box
Copy
Dropbox
FTP
Google Drive
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SkyDrive
MySQL
SmugMug
SugarSync
Web Dav
Within only a couple of minutes I had an account created, which was then given permissions to access my Dropbox and Copy accounts and the transferring began.
Mover transfers files from account to account in the cloud, then Copy downloads them to my PC
The user interface is nicely intuitive: add source (in this case, Dropbox), add a destination (Copy), tell Mover which files to transfer, click “Transfer Now!”
Tell Mover to transfer files from the service on the left to that on the right
What’s also nice is that it doesn’t require my PC to be on while Mover is copying files as the transfer is happening in the cloud, and I can gradually download the files when my PC is on.
One of the immediate attractions is that their basic, free account offers 15GB of storage space, compared with 2GB on Dropbox, for example. As a limited time offer they will also give you and me an extra 5GB if you sign-up from this referral URL: https://copy.com?r=SJuusn
So far I’m impressed. The software does everything I want it to:
Windows and Android applications
Easy Web access
Selective sync
Ability to share files and folders
Bandwidth throttling
Of course, I need to look into the privacy issues but this may be a contender for moving me away from a Dropbox subscription.
This evening I put the finishing touches to my new cheap-and-cheerful network storage: a USB drive attached to my BT Home Hub 2.0 (the shiny, black one).
Step 1: USB drive
The first step was to buy a new USB flash drive. I went for this one from 7DayShop.com. It’s a 32GB USB 2.0 drive and cost me £20.99. Usefully the swivel cap comes off quite easily.
(When I tried this out at first I used an old 256 MB flash drive that I had in my Big Boy’s Drawer of Interesting Things™.)
Step 2: BT Home Hub 2.0
Round the back of the BT Home Hub 2.0 is a USB port. They’ve even, conveniently labelled it “USB”. Plug the USB drive into the port.
(The dust is optional.)
Step 3: Connect with Windows Explorer
Assuming that you’re connected to your BT Home Hub, open a Windows Explorer window and enter the following network address in the address bar: \\BTHUB\Disk_a1 then hit Enter.
Step 4: Map a network drive
To save you having to type in the network address every time you can map a network drive to that location.
In Windows 7, open My Computer and click on the “Map network drive” button on the toolbar at the top:
A dialog windows will pop-up. Select a drive letter and enter the network address, as before, in the Folder input box:
Then click Finish.
You now have a network drive:
Security
I’m going to use mine for backing up a few files and as a useful location for sharing documents between PC and laptop.
I imagine that this isn’t the most secure of solutions, as anyone with access to the network could gain access to the files, if they know the network address, but as a cheap and cheerful way to share files across multiple computers without the other PCs needing to be switched on this is ideal.
Update
Oddly, after a couple of weeks of this working fine I can no longer connect to \\BTHUB\Disk_a1, the PC just tells me that it cannot find the hostname.
