Experience with LiveDrive or alternatives? [closed]

Question

We're thinking of using LiveDrive (www.livedrive.com) to replace a file server for our small web shop (there are three of us, in Baltimore, Boston, and Washington DC, respectively).

LiveDrive has some pretty cool features:

• Unlimited file storage in the cloud for $130/year
• Cache everything locally, or just individual folders
• Shows up as an ordinary mapped drive (L:)

I've previously played with DropBox and SugarSync but found them both to use resources unnecessarily on my local machine.

Has anyone had experience, positive or negative, with using LiveDrive or alternative products (e.g. DropBox, SugarSync, etc.) with a small, geographically distributed team?

Answer 1

I'd just like to point out that no file service is in reality unlimited, whilst on paper it might seem that way.

Never the less, I use Dropbox all the time as I tried LiveDrive for a while but decided against it.

My reasons were simple:

1. It wasn't free anymore.
2. It's not quite as simple (although still very simple).
3. The webinterface wasn't my style

These are some very subjective reasons, but to a more serious perspective I'd say going for LiveDrive could be a good option if you're going to be using more than 100GB. I do prefer Dropbox over anything else I've tried as it's cross compatible, simple for the user and insanely fast.

Dropbox revisions is extremely handy and I doubt that you will need the LiveDrive social features quite as much as they make them sound like value additions.

Personally I would recommend Dropbox, however, look at what you want and pick one. Both are good products and there's nothing "wrong" with either of them.

Answer 2

Our company has been using Livedrive now for a few months and are hating it. Files just disappear. They drop off the system and you have to pray to every god known to man that you can find it in the recycling folder and restore it. Terrible and currently trying to find an alternative....any suggestions.?

Answer 3

I've gone from dropbox.com to sugarsync.com to megaupload.com (1 month) to livedrive.com for 70gb worth of backups including ISOs and music.

Livedrive without the briefcase option is in my view worst than dropbox and sugarsync. However the pluses I've found:

• Localised servers (you get that with all options)
• Fast speeds uploading and downloading from the above
• FTP access. A protocol that's tried and tested over 20 years instead of a flakey file manager written by an underpaid developer in a cupboard somewhere. This is the big selling point for ne
• Unlimited storage for less than the price sugarsync charge for 60gb
• Searching via the web interface
• 30 versions of each file, great for programmers
• A fast website with some decent features
• Java or Flash based upload

The minuses

• A client that is a bit flakey and feels like a rush job
• Downloading folders is slow - it streams them as zips files.
• No HTTP upload

Answer 4

I've been using LiveDrive only for a couple days now and I've noticed that it is REALLY SLOW... Another annoyance is that their software doesn't support Mac. I'm thinking about canceling it before my 30 days are up unless some significant improvements are made... so far - I'm not impressed.