Data Backup Digest

Cloud storage services are aplenty nowadays and it can be difficult knowing which one to pick to store your data on. This article will compare two pretty different services. One is Dropbox, which has been established for a while and is well known as being a reliable and decent cloud service. The other is Forever, a service that is currently available to users through private invite only and claims to store all your data for… well, forever! Let’s take a look at each of these sites in turn and see which will be the best for your needs.

Forever.com
Forever.com has a very unique selling point in that it claims it will store all your data for your entire lifetime, plus 100 years. That’s what they promise at the moment in an advertisement, but they aim to store for 1000 years and beyond. Whether or not this is going to be possible remains to be seen. At the moment the service is only available through private invitation. Users can put their email address on the website to register their interest and be in with a chance of using the service.
For a cost, users can send Forever.com a box full of your physical media, like photos, tapes and letters, and the company will then digitize these and upload them all to your account. Obviously this is something that you can do at home, but it can be a time consuming process. Offering this service on top of cloud storage could be a decent hook for the company.
The only caveat is that storing your data for your life isn’t going to be a cheap process. Every GB costs $100, so something like 100GB is going to set you back $10000. It would be much cheaper to set up your own data backup solution, but perhaps Forever.com isn’t aimed at those tech savvy users.
The company also claim that money made from permanent storage purchases is invested in a fund that is used to help with future digital migration. Technology is quick to change and Forever.com will transfer your content to future file formats so that it remains readable.
In terms of security, the service uses Amazon S3 and Rackspace and, quite rightly, promises not to sell your data and lets you retain rights to your digital assets.

Dropbox
Compared to a lot of cloud storage services out there on the market, Dropbox is one of the originals. It launched in late 2008 and has clients available on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. It has been praised for how simple and easy to use it is.
As the name suggests, all users have to do is drop their files in a ‘box’ (folder). This is then synced to the cloud and accessible from wherever you are.
Dropbox offers a free account that gives users a minimum of 2GB storage and up to 18GB (users can earn 500MB per referral). There are also paid plans, with 100GB costing $9.99 a month or $99 a year, 200 GB costing $19.99/month and $199/year and finally 500GB costing $49.99/month and $499/year. Business plans are also available that start at 1TB for 5 users.
Dropbox uses Amazon S3 for its storage, so it’s on the same lines as Forever when it comes to security.