Novatel NovaDrive cloud-based unlimited storage preview
By Sean Cooper 
posted March 27th 2010 12:59PM
posted March 27th 2010 12:59PM
Hold onto your hats, it seems Novatel, maker of some of the finest 3G / WiFi devices, has decided to stretch its legs from connectivity into the realm of data storage. Not only is the cloud-based storage accessible through their software for Windows or Apple, but the company's thoughtfully built a nice mobile site so your cellphone can get in on the fun. Other notables include the ability to mail files to your file server, easy online collaboration for a team, and you can even send folks links to files who don't have access to your server and track when and if they download it. NovaDrive also touts "unlimited" storage -- though, we'd bet they'll drop the fair use hammer quick if you go too wild -- for roughly $50 a year for the personal version and $150 for the team fileserver version. Not too shabby if online storage is your thing, and even if it isn't, Novadrive has a 30-day demo that won't cost you one red cent, so feel free to give it a whirl.
I think the source link is wrong, maybe it should be "http://www.novadrive.net/" instead of .com
@rugby200 Their website mentions using it to back up your hard drive...but then the fair use clause makes it sound like that would get you banhammered.
How is anybody supposed to back up their hard drive without exceeding "average" use?!?
Right now Dropbox seems to be my favorite cloud based storage system. Especially having a free 6.5gb which is basically a cloud flash drive......But for $50 a year unlimited....seems hard to beat.
@mattc908
I've only got 3.3GB of free space. How did you get 6.5?
@cjschrissouth
Umm. How about really unlimited though? I have over 320GB that i'm storing on Gygan and there is no limit. Check it out - http://www.gygan.com
@cjschrissouth https://www.dropbox.com/anniversary
@vitalyp Looks like gygan.com has a limit on how much you can download. Is that limit just for downloading other people's files, or is it also for your own files?
@cjschrissouth Beta tester got 5gb than friend references put me to 6.5
@Galactor963 it's all files but you can pay to upgrade
@cjschrissouth I've only got 2 GB. I assume both of you have increased your max storage through referrals? My account says I can get up to 3GB (unsure if that's 3GB total, or 3GB bonus from referrals). Still, I'd be interested in learning how one can acquire 6.5GB of DropBox spaces, as I use mine quite a bit.
Time to drop the dumb "cloud" moniker.
Just when we finally got past "Web 2.0"...
Sounds reasonable.
@Spiky haired boy
reasonable? More like GREAT. Nova's competitors offer less storage for significantly more money. This is GREAT.
Hmm....unlimited storage for $50 a year? Pair that with google's fibernet and you've got a serious torrent box.
Unlimited, eh?
Nice, I'll just set up my home RAID to back up to this thing. It'll be a question of who rescinds their unlimited pledge first, them or Comcast.
@spin cycle
Yep, the unlimited pledge is gonna be the make or break for Novatel.
They should really put a fair usage policy on it i.e. only a certain amount extra can be stored each month.
@weeman
They do:
No Limits
While others limit the amount of data you can back up and charge more for extra storage space, NovaDrive offers unlimited backup to ensure all your data is secure and accessible. The unlimited backup is subject to our Fair Usage Policy to ensure users are afforded equal access to the cloud.
http://www.novadrive.net/product/unlimited-backup/
@spin cycle Comcast has never said they have unlimited. They have a 250gb cap, of which I've used about 150gb so far this month (80gb last month and 110gb in January). It would only be trouble to initially get the mass files on there, but only adding a gb or so a month after that would be fine.
"Your Comcast High-Speed Internet service has a monthly data usage allowance of 250 gigabytes (GB). If you are wondering whether you are at risk of exceeding this 250GB threshold, you should know that the vast majority - around 99% - of Comcast customers use significantly less than 250GB per month."
https://customer.comcast.com/Pages/HelpNFC.aspx?print=false&id=aup-lite
@engadgetcomexcludeengadget
Actually when i signed up for Comcast i do recall seeing the word "unlimited" more than once in their advertising even though it's probably not marketed that way today.
@spin cycle The top tier of Comcast is still listed as unlimited. It is so expensive that I don't have it though. I was using creative license to humorous effect.
Note that when the top tier changes to be faster, the previous top tier is no longer unlimited, even if it was when you signed on for it. Best to keep note of the plans on offer at all times then even if you don't plan to change plans soon.
@spin cycle I decided to test this whole unlimited thing and mostly all I got was the driver/software freaking out when told to copy several gigabytes of info at once. I'm not sure what exactly the software is doing but it seems to want to do a local copy that appears to take forever (maybe it's encrypting or compressing the data) before it uploads it to the server. They need to speed up the local processing because I have a fairly beefy computer...would hate to see what happens if someone tried to backup a video project from a less powerful computer lol.
How can one do something like this on internet caps? The highest my isp offers is 75GBs and i have 2.5 TBs of data.
@Donelop It's for us who don't live in third world countries, where there are no such thing as caps on internet. It would be really silly to offer 100+ Mbit fibre with your suggested 75MB cap. It would run out in about a second :S
@HYBRiS I meant Gigabytes and i live 30 minutes away from the states (Canada/Toronto) where it ranges from 2GB to 75GB.
"we might intervene in the spirit of "fair usage" if we see a customer dramatically exceed the storage amounts of an average NovaDrive customer"
How am I suppose to know how much the average NovaDrive customer uses? Am I suppose to take a guess? Is it 100 Gigs? Is it 100 megs? Does this amount change from month to month? They want their cake and want to eat it too. They want to attract customers using words like "unlimited storage" but they don't want bandwidth whores. You can't have it both ways.
@vodka357 I do think this is a good comment, best so far, based on their writings. The fact that they say they will contact you and then try to work with you almost pacifies, and I'd hope over time they would be more generous, making it an "ever-expanding" policy, however, I would have some issues with this too. I guess it'd be best to try to the 30-day trial, but only after hearing good reviews, so as to not waste time/money on this.
I've been test-driving it, it's ok'ish.... but what i would really like is the option to sync a folder on my hard drive instead of having to copy everything to the novadrive created sync drive, which, at least for me makes it a pain to use.
Be prepared to install old versions of Growl and MacFUSE to get it to install correctly. That alone makes it a pass for me :(
Not cool... http://www.novadrive.net/fup/
@lowspeed not so bad. It will probably lead to a 9$ fee if you go over 160GB a month or something.
$50 a year for unlim storage? Unquestionable
@lowspeed
Agreed. And I can't find out where in the world their servers are located, I'll pass.
How does Novadrive differ from Wuala?
From what I can see it appears as though this is using Nomadesk www.nomadesk.com - so just a rebranding. All features look the same. So nothing new here, please drive on.
@nevf It definitely is running nomadesk...it even starts a process with nomadesk's name in it.
I confess that to do large parts of my 500GB initial upload, I may have spent a few hours hanging about my local coffee shops with free WiFi.
It's not foolproof, but quite a few of them have respectably fast uploads.
This of course assuming you have the freedom to work/play are the local coffee shop ;~}
I am trying to upload 1.3G from here in Australia and it says it will take 977 hours and the figure is actually climbing. I'm on ADSL so this is a) crazy, b)useless.
Neville
I like the idea of the NovaDrive and it's ability to sync files in a specific drive/folder across multiple computers. But I also like Mozy or Carbonite and their full backups (not sync) of my computer without having to move files around. What I hope someone will offer soon (if they don't already) is a combination of the 2 - a service that includes full backups of the computer "as-is" and then the ability to choose a folder that syncs across any computers within the account. *That* would be a differentiator for me!
I'm giving CrashPlan a try right now, if it goes well I will be buying the 2 year family plan to use with all my PCs at home. $75 a year for unlimited on multiple PCs (with what looks to be good linux support!) seems like a good deal to me! (and it's even cheaper if you buy 3 years, but that's just too much of a commitment for me right now :P)
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