The perils of online storage…

I’ve talked about online storage and sync in the past (see here and here). My perspective has always been two fold;

1. Don’t store, but sync. Storage at one location only is a recipe for disaster – websites go down as much as hard drives fail. Syncing however means you create your own redundencies
2. Do due diligence – there is a reason that startups IPO rather than self-fund (and reasons beyond money). Listing build credibility (as, it has to be said, does backing by well known VCs). With sync/storage options always check your supplier for potential future problems which could put your data at risk

I was reminded by this when reading Mike’s post about Omnidrive – the online backup service that seems to be dead and buried. Reading the comments on this RWW post (which foretold of Omnidrive’s demise) is a sad tale of woe, and a warning to both startups and users of new offerings.