Does anyone here use iCloud Drive?

lumencreative

lumencreative

lumencreative

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Just after some thoughts really.

Does anyone here use iCloud Drive instead of the likes of OneDrive or Dropbox?

Basically, we bought a Synology NAS enclosure but it's not really working as well as I'd hoped, and I tend to use my 1TB USB Hard Drive more, which unfortunately, I keep leaving connected to my work PC and forgetting to bring home. So, we've decided to look at cloud storage.

I know most of the world at least know about Dropbox but is it really the best option? At home and our design office we use Macs. I have an iPad and an iPhone. At my 'employment' I have a Windows 7 PC. As I mostly use Apple, I thought iCloud Drive would be ideal but it's quite expensive.

Dropbox Pro is £7.99 a month and then there's OneDrive. We already use Office365 for email so OneDrive is included in the cost.

We are basically looking for something to use as a central repository for our business files and the ability to share files/folders with customers who may not already be registered.

Is this possible with OneDrive or Dropbox? I don't think it is with iCloud Drive.

Any thoughts?
 
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lumencreative said:
Just after some thoughts really.

Does anyone here use iCloud Drive instead of the likes of OneDrive or Dropbox?

Basically, we bought a Synology NAS enclosure but it's not really working as well as I'd hoped, and I tend to use my 1TB USB Hard Drive more, which unfortunately, I keep leaving connected to my work PC and forgetting to bring home. So, we've decided to look at cloud storage.

I know most of the world at least know about Dropbox but is it really the best option? At home and our design office we use Macs. I have an iPad and an iPhone. At my 'employment' I have a Windows 7 PC. As I mostly use Apple, I thought iCloud Drive would be ideal but it's quite expensive.

Dropbox Pro is £7.99 a month and then there's OneDrive. We already use Office365 for email so OneDrive is included in the cost.

We are basically looking for something to use as a central repository for our business files and the ability to share files/folders with customers who may not already be registered.

Is this possible with OneDrive or Dropbox? I don't think it is with iCloud Drive.

Any thoughts?
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I personally use a free version of Dropbox, because I've been using them for so long now, I've been lucky to snatch a couple of free promotion HD upgrades, so I can't see myself upgrading to the pro version anytime soon. I do use iCloud for the calender/photo sharing/backup features, although I don't use the iCloud drive feature, because I've already got dropbox.

After reading over your thread and noticing your prepared to pay money for cloud storage. Why don't you just create your own cloud? Bittorrent sync can help you with out, it's pretty new but I was reading up about it recently, sounded very interesting for large amount of file sharing over the cloud.

http://www.getsync.com/
 
Tuxxey said:
I personally use a free version of Dropbox, because I've been using them for so long now, I've been lucky to snatch a couple of free promotion HD upgrades, so I can't see myself upgrading to the pro version anytime soon. I do use iCloud for the calender/photo sharing/backup features, although I don't use the iCloud drive feature, because I've already got dropbox.

After reading over your thread and noticing your prepared to pay money for cloud storage. Why don't you just create your own cloud? Bittorrent sync can help you with out, it's pretty new but I was reading up about it recently, sounded very interesting for large amount of file sharing over the cloud.

http://www.getsync.com/
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input. I've heard of Bittorrent Sync before but my understanding is it's a direct device to device syncing service which requires both the original and target computers to be on (i.e. it takes your files from Computer A and puts them on Computer B without any online repository).

The Synology NAS that I have does have a sync feature called CloudStation but I'm not convinced it's the best solution.
 
I can't understand how Apple's implementation works. I tried accessing it via the website and it just kept giving me an error. I wouldn't have a clue how to save files to it like Google Drive or Dropbox. I don't really trust iCloud either way - the photo sync feature doesn't seem to work across iPad and iPod touch to my satisfaction.
 
I've basically setup my own cloud storage with a WD cloud nas.

It supports cloud access via web, app and can be mountable with both windows and os x.

Addition features is that it supports time machine backups, ftp and ssh access. more importantly there's a RAID option that will back up the files stored on it to another device automatically.

You can give users access to it and they shares by sending them invites where they will have to register with WD with an email to access the files.

another way you could do it is to setup a public facing wiki webserver on a mac server, give everyone that requires access a username and password, which they log into the wiki site and can download the files, this is one way traffic only, so they can download but not upload unless you give them editor rights to their own wiki page. but that requires them to know how to wiki.

Dropbox is by far the most simply solution, create a folder per customer, share that folder with them via their email address and it's done.
 
The_Abyss said:
I use Microsoft's One Drive. 1 TB comes free with Microsoft Office.
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:(
 
I have a couple of transporters from Connected Data.
They now do a decent business solution. Worth checking out for sure.

At work i configure all our ipads/iphones and WP8 phones to use OneDrive.

But I may well be putting the transporters back into use now that they work in a very similar way to dropbox. The difference is, you don't pay a subscription once you've set it up.
 
The iCloud drive executable on my Windows PC keeps preventing it from sleeping, known problem so I never used it.

I use dropbox for sharing stuff with my wife, also use it to sync game saves between PC and laptop (very useful).

I also use OneDrive for photo sharing with friends as the interface is quite nice.

Finally FlickR for long term archiving / last resort backup for my photos.
 
I'm a fan of dropbox for sharing files, but I'm not a fan of using cloud storage for anything but an off site backup.
 
Thanks for all the opinions guys. I think I'm going to give OneDrive a go. I used Word on my iPad for the first time last night and as others have commented, Microsoft Office in general has tight integration with OneDrive so seems like the way to go.
 
I've just started using iCloud to do a similar thing. PC at work, but at home I use my iMac 2-3 days a week when working from home. So installed iCloud on my work machine to sync docs. I already use iCloud for my photo storage so wanted to keep things simple.
 
Double check that your employer is happy with you putting work documents on iCloud Drive - they might have quite reasonable objections to it, preferring that you use a corporate OneDrive or Google Drive subscription.
 
andrewohare said:
I use Onedrive so that I can switch between mac & Pc with no issue

plus I sub to Office 365 so gives me 1TB One drive space and the latest office suite for Mac & PC
Click to expand...

I went ahead and tried OneDrive but I was sorely disappointed.

As we subscribe to Office 365 Business Premium, it made sense to try OneDrive first as the 'free' option (given that we already subscribe to Office 365), however, I think we may be opting for Dropbox instead.

There are obviously pro's and con's for both but I will list my main ones below. Please note these comments are based on my experience using the Mac.

OneDrive
If you subscribe to Office365, it makes complete sense to use OneDrive, given that each user gets 1TB of free cloud storage. Doesn't really matter what you use it for but its free storage so use it :)

I like the way OneDrive is so tightly integrated to Microsoft Office, and things that I save on my Mac or PC are instantly (almost) available on my iPad and iPhone, however, that's about it.

Sharing files and folders on the mac is a bit of a pain in OneDrive and considering OneDrive for business is aimed at teams and collaboration, you would think this would be easier. There are 'share' options in the iOS apps though so it's possible that this function exists in Windows as well. Firstly, to share anything, you have to log into the web version of OneDrive to share anything with anyone. Then, you can't see folders on your Mac/PC that have been shared with you (and this is by design), so you have to log into the web interface to access shared folders.

What makes this even worse is that there's an automatic folder in OneDrive for sharing files with anyone else in your company, and even this folder doesn't sync between different users machines, so you still need to access the Web Interface.

It would make much more sense for this folder to be more of a central repository for files that are sync'd between all users within the company (as the name of the folder suggests).

Sharing files or folders with anyone outside of the company is a little bit easier, in that you click share, enter an email address and away you go, however, the recipient then has to either have a hotmail/outlook account, or create one before they can access the files.

Dropbox
To be fair, dropbox has always been great which is why it's so popular. I have had a free account with Dropbox since its early days but never really used it for much. I have got 4.75GB of free storage which isn't much nowadays.

The main reason I wanted to avoid Dropbox is because I would have to spend £79 per user as appose to OneDrive being in with what we already pay to Microsoft.

The thing that jumps out at me is the sharing. To be honest, this is the main function I am looking for in a solution, the ability to share files with colleagues and/or customers.

With dropbox, you see all shared files and folders right on your PC/Mac/iPad/iPhone, just as you would expect. You can also share files with the ease of a right click. Dropbox gives you the option of sharing via email which gives you a url to paste into your emails. When someone goes to that url, they are not required to create an account, or log in to anything.

It's hard to dismiss OneDrive completely because it can be a good system, and as I said earlier, it's 1TB of cloud storage that if you subscribe of Office 365, is free. However, it has some serious shortfalls which from the reading I've done, is by design.

Microsoft appear to have been intentional about not accessing shared files and folders from the OneDrive apps, which is a real shame.

The jury is still out for us as I am really reluctant to pay £79 for every person that needs Dropbox like functionality so I am eagerly awaiting a response from Microsoft as to whether they will be allowing Sharing in the near future.
 
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