ReadyNAS Vault : great but overpriced!

[kbr88]

i am backing up from pc hard drive but there is probably no reason why it won't back up the NAS. it also provides remote access by creating a "new" L: drive that allows remote access (similar to NAS remote). i also don't see any reason why it also couldnt sync the files that are on the NAS with other pc's since it just another hard drive.
check out livedrive site and see what it says and post back here if you discover anything intersting.

agree that it would be great if netgear simply charged a reasomnable price--if livedrive can charge 99 euros per year for unlimited storage (inclding photos, music etc), why can't netgear? just being greedy i suspect but also missing a great opportunity to build a strong, loyal community that will renew every year!

[claykin]

take a look at http://www.livedrive.com which offers not only secure backup, but also full syncronisation, and remote access. it is also a lot faster than carbonite. i have used both and I prefer livedrive.

and it offers unlimited storage including photos, music etc. and it's reasonably priced for all of the above at about $100/year.

they alos have an iPhone app that really does work!
best

kerry

Here's three reasons for starters why Livedrive is not worth you wasting your time

1) Its not an online backup service. Its an online file repository meant for your convenience to access files. See here from their FAQ page.

Is Livedrive a backup product?
Whilst Livedrive provides a safe and secure place to store your valuable files, it’s not a backup product in the strict sense of the word. Livedrive is not designed to run scheduled backups of system files, email and contacts for example. What Livedrive does offer is a means of securing your valuable files, accessing them from anywhere in the world and easily sharing them with friends and colleagues.

Livedrive is currently developing a backup feature which will be released soon.

2) Files stored on their servers are not encrypted. They are only encrypted while in transit. Do you trust them? Do you trust their software with all its file sharing hoopla to protect your data? Read here from their FAQ page.

What level of security do you provide?
Livedrive uses military grade, AES-256 security to encrypt all communications between a user’s computer and our servers, data stored on your Livedrive is backed up on to multiple storage servers at our data centers ensuring your data is fully protected. Our network is protected by enterprise-grade firewalls ensuring that once your data is on our servers only the people you want to access your data can.

3) Who is housing your data? They claim they use "carrier grade data centers". What does that mean? They don't provide any credentials for the data centers such as meeting any of the following standards. yes I know these are predominately US standards, but similar Int'l standards exist.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
SAS (Statement on Auditing Standards) 70 regulations

In my opinion be careful if you are considering Livedrive for your important data storage.

[claykin]

I love Netgear's ad for Vault- "Can your data survive a disaster?" ...it's more like, "Can your wallet survive an explosion?"

I love ya Netgear, but it's time to get real....

I think Netgear and Elephant Drive are getting the hint that users are not happy with their pricing model. Netgear recently sent me an online questionnaire asking for my opinion on Vault and for the reasons why I've chosen not to use it. Considering that Vault uses S3 yes there's plenty of room for them to move on the price and still be profitable. Instead they choose to be niche and address online storage for the few who don't mind paying dearly.

[rclark]

I sure hope so... I LOVE the concept, but the pricing is just too high.

I recall reading some messages from the JungleDisk dev team about a ReadyNAS add-on being in development for use with their online backup service... anyone hear anything about that (or others)? I certainly be interested in some alternatives to the current Vault offering/pricing.

[rschoonh]

The price disparity between Vault and other offerings just keeps getting more ridiculous! Acronis recently introduced their online backup service at $30/yr (intro, later $50/yr) for 250GB, and iDrive has a plan for 500GB for $150/yr! There are others, too. Netgear's offering, while nicely integrated with Readynas, is an order of magnitude more expensive. In addition, the Vault website is awful, with an unintuitive design/layout, and extremely limited statistics. You can't even see on a folder by folder basis how much space you are using -- they only show the size of individual files and the aggregate total space used. It is so badly designed that you feel like you're being tortured every time you use it.

[fish]

Hi rschoon,

Thanks for the feedback on both pricing and functionality. We are evaluating both issues you've raised, but would like to get a little more information about the concerns so we can make the most effective changes.

First, on pricing - it looks like the Acronis offering does not support external drives or network drives at this time (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... tml#faq-45). This appears to be a common theme among most of the lower cost providers of online backup - offering a reduced effective price per GB but dramatically limiting the devices or systems that are supported, and consequently reducing the actual amount of data an end user can conveniently store. We are assuming that this is not really a viable alternative for you, but want to double check - would you be interested in a similarly priced but also similarly restricted plan? Nearly all of the discontent with the current pricing in this thread seems to come from comparison to offerings that do not actually support network attached storage, so we want to make sure that we are covering this need if it is really there.

The iDrive offering you mention does not appear to have a device restriction, but does include some language regarding "home use." While functional differences certainly remain (e.g. ability to configure remotely, ability to run natively on the ReadyNAS so as not to require a local host to be on, connected, and secure), this appears to present a pretty low effective cost per GB. Would a similarly structured plan, restricted to "home use" only, be a compelling service for you?

Second, on functionality - We are constantly working to improve the usability and extend the functionality of the web-based tools. It sounds like a key feature you are looking for is the ability to right-click or select from an options menu to see the total storage contained within a particular folder - can you confirm that this is the desired functionality? If so, we are happy to report that this will be available shortly. If not, please just let us know (via post or private message) more about the specific feature(s) you are interested in and we can add that feedback to our product road map.

Thanks again for your input.

The ReadyNAS Vault Team

[ahpsi]

If my math is correct it would cost me $9341.64 per year to use ReadyNAS vault, assuming I do not add any data. Given Comcast's recent announcement regarding use of their home service above 250 GB/month (up+down) marking you as an excessive user (and possible termination of service after two months above quota) I'm not even sure how I could get the data to the vault (or any other service).

Server colocation could be an alternative if it wasn't also so expensive (lowest price I found would be $1200 per year). Seems the only option is: buy two ReadyNAS with equal capacity, locally sync them up, take one to a friends house and RSYNC moving forward.

[claykin]

fish -

Thanks for taking interest in user opinion. I agree with you when it comes to the providers you mentioned. Even the venerable Mozy and Carbonite suffer from limitations/restrictions in service use.

I would really like to be able to perform cloud backup of my Readynas' directly from the unit, but choose to use Jungledisk through a desktop instead. I've had such good luck with Jungledisk for the last 3+ years that its hard to consider others. That said, I would possibly consider the Vault service if its pricing model was competitive with Jungledisk. It would also need features such as:

1) AES128/256 encryption with no one else holding the keys but me
2) ability to select directories within a share for selective backup
3) include/exclude lists for file types (such as .tmp or ~*.*)
4) Delta file copy (Comcast isn't the only one with bandwidth caps)
5) Compression of backup data to reduce storage costs
6) previous version backup

7) Deduplication would also be nice, but thats not as critical.

[rschoonh]

Fish:

Thank you very much for soliciting input. I was becoming used to being ignored on Netgear's forums.

Several others have already responded with some good points. Here is what I would add:

To your point about backing up NAS/UNC's, you are correct in general, and I frankly don't understand the reasoning behind the near universal lack of support for this, given the growing prevalance of NAS in the consumer market. However, it turns out that despite what they say, I have found that pretty much all of them (Acronis, Mozy, etc.) will in fact allow you to back up from a mapped drive if it is mapped at login. The clear disadvantage of having to back up NAS this way is that you must map a drive to each share you want to back up, and the account that does this must be logged in (there are ways around this last point, though). Although it's inconvenient, this method will work and allows one to use reasonably priced services.

Which leads me to your inquiry about alternative pricing plans. I once again don't get why it should matter at all to an online backup vendor where or from what device the data comes; I am purchasing a given amount of backup capacity and should be able to use it in whatever way I choose. I can't see that the source device has any bearing whatever on the cost of providing the service. So, no, I would not be particularly interested in a device-restricted plan. A lower-priced "home use" plan might be of interest to me, but I would need to understand what restrictions it would entail. Would you base such a plan on less frequent backups and therefore lower bandwidth usage, or what?

As for functionality, yes -- I would love to have the ability to see space usage on an individual folder (and subfolder) basis. To my mind, the lack of this feature in a backup product which charges based on space usage is inexplicable except as a mechanism for increasing revenue. In the same vein, the lack of an ability to automatically delete from backup those items which have been deleted at the source hobbles the entire product and again seems like a revenue-enhancement ploy. Providing only for manual data deletion is an overly simplistic form of data protection and makes any kind of space management an exercise in time and patience. It should not be necessary for me to explain better ways of handling this; every other vendor has done so.

Now for some slightly less severe annoyances:

1) Under the Backup/Restore tab, after selecting Manage Backup Jobs, so much (vertical) space is consumed by the top logo and the various banners that the area left for displaying the actual job listing is tiny, requiring constant scrolling. How about maximizing work area and minimzing the extraneous elements?

2) There is no useful help information accessible on the website. Clicking the Help button on the right simply loads the Netgear general support page. How about some FAQ's, at least? Explain how to back up all home directories. Explain how to exclude folders and files; whether wildcards are supported, etc. Explain how the continuous backup works -- how often & what triggers it. I could go on and on here. There is nothing, though. A big FU to the user -- go somewhere else to find the answers, it says.

3) The operation of the website itself has myriad inconsistencies. The one that annoys me the most is the fact that after I delete a subfolder from a folder AND empty the trash, the subfolder still is displayed under the hierarchy in the left pane. This makes it darn difficult to keep track of what I've deleted and what I haven't. This happens with the Trash, too. Put some stuff in there, Empty Trash, and folders and subfolders still show under Trash on the left. Click on Trash, and it says "No Item in Trash", but click on a folder still showing under Trash on the left, and the items within still display. Is the trash emptied or not? Who knows?

4) Reporting is clumsy and unituitive. How about providing standard time ranges (the last week, month, etc.) in addition to the current custom range? How about integrating error information with the backup job status instead of making us have to look it up separately? How about a pie chart showing account usage by share instead of the almost useless total?

And, again, I could go on and on. Really, the ONLY virtue Vault has going for it is the integration with Readynas.

-Randy

[fish]

Great input. While many of the points your raise and suggestions you offer could justify extensive discussion threads on their own, a few quick thoughts below...

@claykin:

Thanks for helping to highlight the misconception regarding "apples to apples" comparisons. When many of the most aggressive advertisers in the space are offering "unlimited" storage but restricting the devices that are covered, it can be challenging for us to explain the difference.

The software you are currently using is a nice alternative and very reasonable from a cost perspective (essentially passing Amazon S3 costs directly to you). It does not, as you note, currently run natively on the NAS, so a connected host is required. Also, for the same reason, you cannot manage or configure via the web. We are working to devise pricing that will be closer to what you are seeing there.

We also appreciate your suggestions. Some are coming just around the corner (#2 and #3 are really just a matter of exposing the interfaces to you) and almost all the others are part of the road map. If you private message me your username, we can alert you for beta release of this functionality as it becomes available. As a follow up, are the desired features in order of priority or importance to you?

@rschoonh

We can't say for sure why other providers restrict access based on device, but the conventional wisdom in the blogo-sphere appears to be that the make these restrictions for cost management purposes. That is, they may offer "unlimited" or large fixed amounts under the assumption that most users will not actually use that much space. Because outliers who either truly take advantage of the full amount of space offered or test the limits of "unlimited" become very unprofitable very fast for them, they then may institute restrictions that make it practically very unlikely for such outliers to influence their average storage. While sophisticated users have been able, in some instances, to develop work around techniques to use services for unsanctioned devices, these users run the risk of having their service shut off by the providers for violations of the terms of use.

What we can say for sure is that your feature requests (folder level storage visibility and rules-based deletion) are very reasonable and echoed by others in more private communication. We are working on implementing them now and will take the other issues you've identified as problems or annoyances into account as we proceed.

Again, while we are disappointed that you've had a challenging experience, we appreciate the candid and clear feedback very much and will attempt to improve based on your (collective) input.

[jet11x]

Some very interesting discussion on this forum. Even though I currently have unlimited storage with Mozy I'm not expecting NetGear to offer exactly the same. The cost model currently on offer is very high by comparison and as stated elsewhere on this topic it is currently exacerbated by the storage being eaten up by old versions and deleted files. But, for this extra cost I get a service far inferior to Mozy. I'm hoping it won't be too long before the service performs well enough to at least be a viable alternative to Mozy (I'd much prefer to directly backup from the NAS rather than via a PC).

[rcarr6502]

I think I need someone to double-check my math on ReadyNAS Vault pricing.

http://www.netgear.com/readynasvault
>>
$199/yr + ($150/yr * 50 GB)
<<

If I currently have 2.5 TB of data on my ReadyNAS that I'd like to back up, that's:

(2500 GB / 50 GB) * $150 = $7500/yr + $199/yr = $7699/yr.

Is that right?

And as ahpsi mentioned, Comcast users would be hard-pressed to push more than 250 GB / month to ReadyNAS Vault.

[claykin]

You got it. That said, Vault is not designed to store all your NAS data. Its designed to store the most critical files and those files that change frequently. For media files you can do local backups and rotate them offsite. Or do NAS to NAS backup.

Anyone who wishes to store 100's or 1000's of GB of data in the cloud is best served by seeding the backup using a USB disk you send to the provider. Several online backup services offer the option for you to send your data via disk for the initial backup.

[rcarr6502]

OK, those are good points. Thanks.

[TimSee]

You got it. That said, Vault is not designed to store all your NAS data. Its designed to store the most critical files and those files that change frequently. For media files you can do local backups and rotate them offsite. Or do NAS to NAS backup.

I was researching the NAS to NAS option and realized the Duo would make a perfect secondary backup NAS. With discounts and a single 500GB drive, one can be had for < $250USD. However, I was disappointed to learn the Duo doesn't support rsync over SSH so that's not really a viable alternative either.

I keep coming back to my original request - give me Amazon S3 as a backup choice in Frontview...please