One device, 1TB of personal cloud storage

https://www.spacemonkey.com/

by blaze33 • 12 years ago

64 44 12 years ago

blaze332• 12 years ago

Seeing the discussion around disk42 (Saas version of seafile) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8739094 I thought it would be a good time to repost the space monkey link (not that I'm affiliated nor a user) to see where we are in terms of distributed storage protocols now.

Some q&a I had with their co-founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996053 (parent discussion mostly about an alleged kickstarter scam)

notum• 12 years ago

Actually Space Monkey was discussed before as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564546

While the fragmented/distributed backup approach is cool and useful some people might not like paying $50 for the privilege of seeding other people's files with their bandwidth.

blaze332• 12 years ago

Thanks, I hadn't seen this thread before, I was actually thinking that an open protocol would allow you to have a fast/reliable/etc. backup in exchange of a share of your local storage.

Obviously if it's phrased like I'm paying to have other people use my bandwidth, that's a big issue.

tckr3• 12 years ago

I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product … so far as I have dismembered the SpaceMonkey and the 2TB hard drive now is part of my Synology NAS setup.

SpaceMonkey's features are at best rudimentary and only usable as a personal cloud storage. Don't even think about working in a team (to be fair, the team is working on sharing features).

The device used huge amount of bandwidth and made the network in my coworking space unusable.

So today I can only recommend to look into a different solution …

throwaway509468• 12 years ago

I'm also one of the Kickstarter backers. The device's bandwidth usage indeed interferes with normal usage of the network. When I contacted support, they told that they wouldn't add a lower bandwidth cap setting.

I had to disconnect it months ago and the device has been stored since then.

alenlpeacock6• 12 years ago

The device needs around 400kbps of uplink capacity currently, though we are working to lower that.

In my own home, I'm on the slowest DSL tier that my provider offers, and only have 700kbps upstream. Space Monkey works fine here, and I can still do dual Netflix streams while it is running. Some users will have to manually adjust their bandwidth settings in environments like this.

antr2• 12 years ago

I too was a backer in their Kickstarter campaign. Due to the poor communication, continuous delays, and uncertainty on pricing and ownership, I requested a refund. I then bought a synology NAS, setup it up with raid 10, vpn, and Amazon glacier backup. I couldn't be more happy with the decision.

Since then, SpaceMonkey got acquired... which I find fascinating.

tw04• 12 years ago

Skip the glacier and use crashplan for backup. Cheaper, and better options for restoring your data (like having a drive mailed to your house vs. pulling it over the WAN).

simonebrunozzi• 12 years ago

Same story for me. Waited for too long, didn't work well, sent it back.

alenlpeacock6• 12 years ago

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you, tckr. Since initial delivery, we have made some great strides at reducing bandwidth usage. Just to be clear, we only hear about this being a problem for users with really small uplink bandwidth. As a co-founder at Space Monkey, I've subjected myself and my family to living with Space Monkey on this type of a link -- I have the lowest tier DSL connection available from my ISP in my own home and run Space Monkey there without problem currently.

We have recently delivered shared folder functionality via the web client, and are working on shared folders for the desktop as well. I've been personally using a beta version of desktop shared folders for collaboration for over a year. We want to make sure we nail this experience before releasing it more broadly.

Thanks for backing us early on! Hope you might give us another look at some point in the future.

tckr3• 12 years ago

Event with cloud storage costs approaching $0 we need a product like SpaceMonkey. I still admire your approach and I will keep up to date with your progress.

WhitneyLand2• 12 years ago

>I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product

If you are going to throw out this statement please give specifics: Did they miss milestones? Did they promise certain features and not deliver on them?

tckr3• 12 years ago

I tried to point out some of the perceived flaws of SpaceMonkey in my post.

A specific problem is that the ability to copy files with LAN speed to the device turned out to be true only for small files. If you have gigabytes of files you can mount it as a network drive in linux and have around 32MB/s write speed.

On Windows and Mac the client will cache files in a temp folder and copy the to the device. So you can't just unplug your laptop and leave immediately but have to wait for the sync to finish … that is some functionality they promised in the kickstarter campaign.

And I experienced problems with the offline mode where you are supposed to use the SpaceMonkey network to retrieve your files if your device is offline. This didn't work in my case.

RyanMcGreal• 12 years ago

Whether you use an iPhone, Android, Mac, or Windows, we have you covered.

Does it support Linux?

tartuffe78• 12 years ago

Seeing as you posted the list of platforms they support, and Linux isn't on it, the answer is no.

cefstat• 12 years ago

The page https://www.spacemonkey.com/tour mentions under Linux "Alpha access by request".

cabirum• 12 years ago

"So, what a wireless speaker has to do with cloud storage?" — my first thought after opening the website.

"Oh, its not wireless"

"And not a speaker."

unwind• 12 years ago

So, if it's "Only $49/year" (top of page) but also provides "1TB of personal cloud storage for $10/month" (bottom of page), how many months are there in their years? Do I pay per year, or per month? Is the hardware "free"?

Very confusing, and that took maybe 20 seconds to find.

DEinspanjer• 12 years ago

Yeesh, I missed the monthly charge. What legitimate reasons other than pure profit would they need to charge a non-trivial monthly charge? Unless they are completely failing to sell enough devices to accommodate the distributed storage, they aren't having to store the data themselves. At most it seems they just have to have servers to facilitate the distributed coordination.

alenlpeacock6• 12 years ago

The confusion results from two different plans:

Plan A: buy the device upfront and own it. Price includes 1 year of network backup service. After the first year, if you want to continue the network backup, it's $49/year ($4/month).

Plan B: don't pay anything upfront for the device and lease it plus the service for $10/month for as long as you like.

Plan A is the only service available directly from the website currently, and we need to clarify the copy on the webpage -- thanks for pointing out to confusion.

gregd• 12 years ago

As a Kickstarter backer too, we've pointed out to you guys for months that your pricing scheme was confusing and didn't make any sense. You haven't cleared it up any since.

ctdonath• 12 years ago

Yes, clarify! Say so!

First thing I read: $49/year. Last thing I read: $10/month. No further clarifications. Not something that evokes trust, esp. when backers are saying they've been shouting about this for months. Even in stating "Plan A: buy the device upfront and own it" - ok, how much is that?

zhte415• 12 years ago

So, the storage and distribution model is a bit like FreeNet, distributed across other devices, but everything is private, no sharing?

alenlpeacock6• 12 years ago

Everything is private, every user has a unique key associated with their account, and every object (file and folder) has unique, individual encryption keys generated for it.

Because of the way data is encrypted, the system supports sharing at the file and folder level without granting access to other data in a user's filesystem.

akerl_• 12 years ago

I admit to being confused by their security statements. Is the OS and code running on the device open sourced? Given that it looks like the device is handling the encryption, and I got the device from them, I don't see any publicized way for me to verify that any encryption is actually happening.

rehemiau• 12 years ago

http://sherlybox.com/

I'd say sherlybox is a better deal

serf• 12 years ago

http://pogoplug.com/devices#pick

a top end pogo plug with a 3TB drive would be cheaper and more capable (usb3.0/sd card/user choice in HDD), or you can save fifty bucks if you don't need multi-user support.

thedangler• 12 years ago

I want to try this one. https://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?id=10597

alenlpeacock6• 12 years ago

One of the reasons Space Monkey exists: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2856553/cloud-storage/you-c...

kolev• 12 years ago

People continue to abuse the term "cloud" these days...

mrb• 12 years ago

I have been watching Space Monkey for a while... I love the concept of local-to-your-home-network storage made easy to use and easy to share anywhere, even on devices outside your home network. This easily beats any cloud service when it comes to synchronizing speed because I can sync at 1 Gbit/s on my GbE network, vs. the ~10 Mbit/s uplink of my cable Internet.

There is also Pogoplug [1] which is a superior idea IMHO: the user provides his own USB hard drive(s). This reduces the price of the device and gives more space flexibility: you can connect any size and any number(!) of drives via a USB hub. There is another company doing something similar to Pogoplug, but I cannot remember their name at the moment. Of course the downside of Pogoplug is that there is no backup. But for my own needs, I would prefer Pogoplug's trade-off (unlimited storage & no backup & no constant Internet traffic) compared to Space Monkey (1TB limit & automatic backup & constant ~400kbit/s of traffic background to the SpaceMonkey distributed network).

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/5/2910802/pogoplug-series-4-r... (I link to a review because the company's main website does not do a good job of describing the product: http://pogoplug.com/devices)

One device, 1TB of personal cloud storage

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