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Dropbox: a simple way to sync files in the cloud

Posted on 16 Aug 2010 at 11:06

If you're looking for a simple way to synchronise files in the cloud and don't like the look of Microsoft SkyDrive, Jon Honeyball may just have the answer

Dropbox doesn’t offer many choices here, although pressing Quit will stop any synchronisation. However, Dropbox is set to autorun by default, and you may not notice a big synchronisation taking place in the background.

Dropbox needs to become more network-aware – so for example, it should be possible for it to auto-pause on change of default gateway, then to prompt with a “Do you want to take Dropbox online again?” question that has to be answered before traffic resumes.

You should be careful about what you put into Dropbox shared space, because if you fall foul of the Data Protection Act you’ll be liable

My next worry is that your data is held in the cloud, presumably in the USA, so it may be open to Patriot Act inspection, and there are implications under the UK’s Data Protection Act too.

You should therefore be careful about what you put into Dropbox shared space, because if you fall foul of the Data Protection Act you’ll be liable. It would be nice if Dropbox offered a European-hosted data service, but there’s no sign of that at the moment.

Finally, there’s no way to control any encryption on the service. Dropbox says that all file transfers are over an encrypted SSL connection, that all files stored on its servers are encrypted with AES-256, that files are inaccessible without a username and password and that Dropbox employees are unable to view any files.

All of that is adequate, but I’d like to be able to insert my own certificate into the system for all my files, to ensure that everything is encrypted under my control. This would cause issues with shared folders, for example, but I’d be happier about holding data outside of the EU.

Great overall

Overall, this is a great service for data backup, recovery and sharing. It’s considerably more sophisticated than just a simple mounted drive using WebDAV. Clearly, it’s useless for disaster recovery, but as a means of ensuring you always have access to your stuff, there’s much to commend it.

As for myself, I’ve paid for the full 100GB solution with the Pack-Rat upgrade, and have added it to my suite of backup, archive and data transfer tools.

I now find it easier to get a friend to install the free Dropbox client and then join in a share than it is to push our files on to some other online shared space. For home and small-business users, this is a great solution.

For larger businesses its lack of management umbrella control and user-controlled encryption could be a worry, but give it a whirl and you might find it incredibly useful – I know I have.

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