Life on the Spot! Life and Leisure in Doha, Qatar

Remember when the Internet boom gave us companies that provided us virtual hard drives that gave us space on their servers for free so we could upload our Microsoft Word Documents, Excel files, JPGs, and MIDIs and have a backup of these? My colleagues in Saudi Aramco used to sign up for each new service that comes out almost on a weekly basis. I did sign up for Xdrive, Freedrive, Freeway and other sites whose names I don’t recall cause they were a lot. At first they gave out 20mb, then 50 mb, and then 100mb of space. This was really good since you can have access to your files wherever you go (thumbdrives weren’t conceived yet!). I would be able to access my files while vacationing in the Philippines and I could also upload files while on vacation which can be accessed later in the office. But as the Internet boom became the Internet Bust, these services died away into oblivion, leaving all our documents and files in limbo.

Since last year, there has been a re-emergence of this service. Some offer free storing of files and for paying a premium, you get bigger space and bandwidth for uploads and downloads. You now see a lot of people using Rapidshare or Oxyshare for personal files and even to share them. But they usually delete your files if nobody downloads them or after a month of storage.

The solution? Mozy! Mozy offers free, automatic and a secure way of backing up your files. It gives you 2 Gb of space for free and offers a premium service of $4.95/month for a 30Gb space. But who needs to pay that amount right? Anyway, I’m taking it for a spin and see how it fairs with previous offerings. Though everyone now has thumbdrives hidden in pens, keychains and whatever, it’s always good to have a backup especially if it’s for free. You can probably even use your account to share your personal videos with your relatives. Of course, you might need to share your user name and password too! In any case, Mozy might be a fad but let’s see if companies offering virtual hard drives can be made successful.