AOL closing Xdrive, AOL Photo & Bluestring: move your data!

Former_MSE_Lawrence

What's the deal?

Last week, AOL announced to customers that it'd be terminating some of its popular online storage services to cut costs. On December 31, it'll pull the plug on photo upload/sharing services AOL Photo & Bluestring, and data backup service Xdrive. Thus, if you've files stored there, you'll need to move them sooner rather than later, or else they'll be gone forever.

What to do:

The best bet, if you've got the space, is simply to sign into to your account with any of these and download all your data to your pc, putting your mind at rest. All three services will allow you to 'bulk download'. Then you can choose an alternative service for your data (see below).

If you haven't the space on your machine, or you don't trust it to do the job, it's also possible to get the data on DVD/s from AOL for a fee. As yet, there's no mention of the actual cost.

AOL Photo only: If you've only got photos stored, it's possible to transfer them for free to the American 'PhotoWorks' site. Yet this is hardly the most fully-featured site in the world for photo storage, and especially not for UK users, so it'll better in the long run to just download them, then upload them to another site. More info from AOL

Alternatives:

For Photos:

As well as the incredibly popular Flickr, it's worth looking at Windows Live Photo Gallery, especially if you use any other Windows Live services like Hotmail & Messenger. Google's Picasa Web Albums is another decent option, again, especially if you use its other services.

For Data Backup:

The highest amount of free storage currently up for grabs is a mammoth 50GB with ad-supported storage service ADrive. Other top picks for freeness include Humyo, which offers 10GB free, and Windows Live Skydrive, which now offers 25GB.

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straddie

Some inaccurate information here:

- Google Picasa is their photo management application. What you're talking about is actually Google Picasa Web Albums, and whilst there's a link to this on the main Picasa website, the page you want is actually http://picasaweb.google.com

- Windows Live Spaces is not Microsoft's data backup solution; although it integrates with Spaces, their service is actually called SkyDrive (http://skydrive.live.com) and now comes with 25GB free storage. An alternative Microsoft offering is Live Mesh (http://www.mesh.com), also free; this only comes with 5GB (for now - expected to increase in time) and has the benefit of software which keeps your data automatically synchronised with your computer.

My personal recommendation for data backup isn't a free solution, but is very cheap - https://www.jungledisk.com.

G'Meister

straddie wrote: »

Some inaccurate information here:

- Google Picasa is their photo management application. What you're talking about is actually Google Picasa Web Albums, and whilst there's a link to this on the main Picasa website, the page you want is actually http://picasaweb.google.com

- Windows Live Spaces is not Microsoft's data backup solution; although it integrates with Spaces, their service is actually called SkyDrive (http://skydrive.live.com) and now comes with 25GB free storage. An alternative Microsoft offering is Live Mesh (http://www.mesh.com), also free; this only comes with 5GB (for now - expected to increase in time) and has the benefit of software which keeps your data automatically synchronised with your computer.

My personal recommendation for data backup isn't a free solution, but is very cheap - www.jungledisk.com.

I used to use Mozy but found it slow, and have moved to IDrive but I'm still dissatisfied. Live Mesh and JungleDisk look fantastic, and I've never seen mention of them anywhere before, so thanks very much trying them out now, I think I'll go for Live Mesh because I don't need more than 1GB and if the Remote Desktop functionality works well I could run one less taskbar application; using that instead of LogMeIn.

So kudos to you

Praxis99

I've tried a few on-line backup services (including AOL's from which I've now deleted my data) and currently actively use one called Syncplicity http://www.syncplicity.com/ which offers 2GB of free on-line storage which while not enough to back up all your data is more than enough to back up essentials (you can purchase more storage if needed).

I also have data stored on Diino and for a while used Idrive which was fine but I find Syncplicity works better for me (particuarly with respect to its ability to sync files on my hard drive with files stored online, change a seleted file and its almost immediately backed up online with no noticable system slowdown).

With respect to Adrive while its free storage is very generous it doesn't appear that your data is encypted so I'd be wary of storing anything of a private of sensitive nature there. I have an Adrive acount which I use to store ISO images of essential software (useless to anyone without the software keys) and when you log in have noted that http shows in the address line not https which would if the connection was encypted so be a little careful here.

balajo

I click to launch xdrive classic and it sends me to the login page, I login and it sends me to the classic launch xdrive page and there is no customer service.
Anyone have any ideas how to get out of this dilemma??/:mad: