Livedrive
Verdict
A storage and synchronisation service with some nice additions, but it's too expensive.
Review Date: 11 Mar 2009
Price when reviewed: Pro: unlimited storage, 10 PCs, £78 (£90 inc VAT) per year
Overall Rating

Not What They Appear To Be
Livedrive is a false front. They have PR specialists that have designed a fancy web site with fancy claims. Many are lies, or worded in such a way to cover up the truth. They claim data is encrypted, yet we have proven otherwise. There are features that were listed as “soon” 8 months ago, like a Mac client & iPhone app, but have yet to see any light of day. They posted a screen grab of the iPhone app, but it turned out to be merely a photoshop pic. They advertise 24 hour support response, but that response is an auto-reply. It will probably take months for your issue to be resolved. They advertise unlimited storage, but one user got his account closed because he had too many terabytes of files on their servers. Some users have complained about files disappearing, and Livedrive won’t acknowledge it, let alone fix it. FTP service was released for public use, but was plagued with outages for months. Bug reports are ignored unless enough people complain about a particular issue. In a recent desktop client release, instead of fixing problems, they just disabled features as a way to resolve them. They put forth a beautiful looking car, but under the hood, it is a jalopy.
By dogspot on 6 Oct 2009 
Livedrive is full of false promises!!
See there forums... currently its down... so i suspect they plan on tidy up there forums so no one will see deceitful practices.
When someone emails about potential data corruption.. they reply that they are not aware of it.. even when we know in fact that in may there were many problems. They dont fess up and admit there client has no encryption.. everything that is transferred to LD is clear and open. even there FTP is not using a secure SFTP protocol!! They have work to do to gain trust of people!
Beware of empty promises!!!
By BigJames on 7 Oct 2009 
Livedrive is worth every penny
I have been using Livedrive since the beta and its turned into the best online storage service around. I used to use Mozy to backup my files but am now using Livedrive on all 3 of my computers. the ability to not keep a local copy of files on my computer is a genius and I've never had any problem with it. I don't use FTP but have uploaded files with the web a few times and that worked fine..but the real treat with Livedrive is the windows software that presents the virtual drive letter. Once you get used to using it, you'll never go back.
By Sundip on 4 Nov 2009 
Very easy to use
Not sure where all of the negativity comes from in the comments... I've been using Livedrive for about 5 months and I find it really useful. I've tried other online storage like box.net before, but none of them make it anywhere near as easy to upload so much data quickly - I've literally got about 800 gigs on there. The subsequent control you have over keeping some files online and some files offline makes it really flexible - although it did take some getting used to. I use it on both my work and home PCs, so its great deciding which files are available on which PCs, and then bringing down the other ones just when you need them.
I just need the iphone app now - if they do that well and let you view photos and documents then that for me will make it complete.
By redsorghum on 7 Nov 2009 
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