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Do you regularly backup on iDisk?

  • Yes, it works fine.

    Votes: 35 49.3%
  • Yes, but it is very slow.

    Votes: 15 21.1%
  • No, it is too slow.

    Votes: 21 29.6%

  • Total voters
    71

doobs

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2008
136
0
I have Mobileme and have found that iDisk is so incredibly slow at uploading (even when on my university network connection) that it is borderline unuseable. It bogs down my computer when it is syncing and it is miserably slow for anything over ~20MB. For example, backing up my iPhoto library (~1.3GB) takes at least an entire day. I am curious to know how many people that have Mobileme regularly use their iDisk for backup and keep it in sync.
 

RKO

macrumors 6502
Oct 21, 2008
467
2
I did for the first few months and I found the same problem with bogging the system down so I stopped using it. I don't miss it anyways.
 

yuanmoons

macrumors 6502
Aug 7, 2008
283
0
I use it with ForkLift app. Via the finder i dont trust it. Forklift has a sync folder function - try the demo.

iDisk is great, esp. to be able to use it as a place to backup and store a sort of archive - bit like the loft space in a house ie. a place you dump stuff that you dont need to hand / thats taking up space but also are not ready to trash. :)

I dont keep a sync copy on my harddrive.
 

southerndoc

Contributor
May 15, 2006
1,851
522
USA
I use it to store any letters, financial statements, etc. because I can access it from my desktop or laptop computer.
 

317342

Cancelled
May 21, 2009
785
569
iDisk is okay but not great; it's slow and syncing is not 100% reliable. I went back to a flash drive and just stuck w/ that.

I doubt I'll renew the subscription, it's been a bomb since iPhone 3G came out.
 

sananda

macrumors 68030
May 24, 2007
2,843
1,027
I use it but I upload with Cyberduck; it's just too slow with Finder.
 

alphaod

macrumors Core
Feb 9, 2008
22,183
1,245
NYC
iDisk worked for a while, then I decided to just dump all my stuff on my web server. Much cheaper… of course I do have MobileMe, but I'm spending $100 more for just 40GB more in space.
 

FamiliaPhoto

macrumors 6502a
Jul 24, 2009
699
14
Chicago, IL
I find iDisk to be fine for light file management. I like it for word docs, spreadsheets, etc. This way I can view them on any PC or my iPHone with Quick Office which I find as its best feature.

Being a photographer I have found online backup systems to be too slow to upload to in general. I would not back up my images which average 25 meg each to anything but a NAS, USB or Firewire drive. Not uncommon for me to leave a shoot with 12 plus gig in images.
 

jamesdmc

macrumors 6502
Oct 17, 2007
258
1
Cittagazze
To me, Dropbox is what iDisk should have been. At first I was using it (iDisk) sparingly for the occasional word doc or spreadsheet and using Dropbox for the heavy lifting. After a while, I just abandoned iDisk altogether. It's too slow and unreliable. With three macs, I like MobileMe as a whole, I just don't use the iDisk.


By the way, does the iDisk support symlinks? The last time I added a symlink to it, I kept getting an error with each synchronization.


James
 

jamin100

macrumors 6502
Sep 22, 2008
498
0
Dropbox is a massive improvement over idisk. That and my own domain with a google apps account has made me leave my mobileme subscription for good.
 

kemo

macrumors 6502a
Oct 29, 2008
821
201
Today I checked DropBox - and it is really great, also with google apps acc it is better than iDisk..
 

e.m.

macrumors 6502
Mar 18, 2005
280
0
San Francisco
I too have started using Dropbox over iDisk as of two weekes ago.

I upgraded my service to 50GB last night, and currently uploading my iTunes and iPhoto libraries so all my Macs can have one unified library. And I'll be able to sync my iPhone from all my Macs as well. Awesome. :D
 

317342

Cancelled
May 21, 2009
785
569
Mail - Yes, followed by Yahoo, and Gmail to a lesser extent.
iDisk - Yes, daily.
Calendar Sync - Yes.
Contacts Sync - Yes.
iPhone finder- Not yet (knock on wood)

My wife and I both use iDisk w/ sync. She's a teacher and needs access to her files when her computer is off or otherwise not available, so it works out really well for her. For me it works well and it has been MUCH better than it was this time last year--it was a total fail after the iPhone 3G was released, but apparently SJ fixed most of it. Other than hiccups sending e-mail (SMTP) at times, it seems to work pretty well for the most part.

As far as iDisk, I use it a lot for document sharing between my iMac and MBP, "sharing" (class projects), and it's already around 2GB and growing.

The only reason I haven't really jumped ship to something like Zumodrive or Dropbox is b/c I'm rather distrusting of some of these up-and-comings, would rather take a chance on a more established company (ie. Apple, Microsoft, etc.) for reliability (and privacy).

For instance, I used to use Skydrive (skydrive.live.com) when it was in beta (1GB) and now it's somewhere around 5GB free, but your uploads can only be 50MB max. Kinda sucks. I'm probably one of a small percentage of Mac people who used Skydrive but find iDisk a lot better. I tested Zumodrive on our iMac and it was not reliable at all; I was thinking of trying Dropbox but I'm happy w/ what I've got, and it's already 10GB (split w/ my Mail).

Truth be told MM is not a bad deal if you are using many of the functions (ie. iDisk, Mail, Sync, iPhone, etc.). I have a Yahoo account that is still my #2 (ebay, paypal, forums, craigslist, etc.) but use the MM account as my #1 for e-mail (ie. family, friends, colleagues, etc.). Were it not for aliasing, I would probably have gone to Gmail or something similar.
 

robanga

macrumors 68000
Aug 25, 2007
1,657
1
Oregon
Its not my main backup either, but I do use it for key files that I need access to from all computers.
 
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