2011-01-30

Google Docs Storage

I've been playing with google docs storage for about a month. The user interface is inferior to Amazon S3 + S3Fox in every way, but for 1/5th the cost I'm willing to put up with it (though it's only 1/5th the cost if I fill up all the storage for the given price tier, I think they expect most users not to use a large fraction). AVIs and JPEGs can be dragged-and-dropped in quantity, but NEF and .ini files have to use the 'select more pictures' dialog which can only handle 10-15 files at a time (otherwise a strange character appears instead of a list of all the files). Upload speeds seem good (a megabyte every 3 seconds or so), better than I remember S3 being last time I tried it.

There are some linux filesystem programs that can mount my entire google online storage (including blog posts), but only allow uploading of the google docs formats and not any file at all like can be done with the upload dialog. Hopefully this changes.

5/8/2011 update

Folder upload is now possible (no more shift selecting the contents of a folder and having to cut and paste folder names), and it looks like subfolders are uploaded properly. But sometimes a file fails to upload properly, and using the file method it was possible to see which file failed and re-queue for upload. Now after I've uploaded a folder with 90 items and it took 20 minutes, there is an error message saying that one file failed to upload, but no way to know which one. Retry fails repeatedly. Some reports of same, though I haven't seen the other bugs mentioned.

8 comments:

qubodup said...

well that sounds suckey..

no ftp access?

Perhaps in some cases it'd be possible to create archives of the files you want to upload..

binarymillenium said...

Zips or tarballs of files would in 100 MB or sub GB sizes would be easier to manage, but I like being able to browse and view individual files.

It is a great tool for sharing large (but not > 1GB for each file) data assets, for instance a ton of raw lidar data.

I can also imagine it being useful to collaborate on a video project (where multiple people need access to large video files).

binarymillenium said...

Actually here's all the velodyne lidar data.

Faraz said...

What about dropbox.com? Have you checked that?

binarymillenium said...

Looks like DropBox is $2.40/GB/Year, while Google docs is $0.25/GB/Year (and S3 is $1.68/GB/Year). It's highly likely they're using S3 or the Google developer storage as a backend so have to charge more to make any money, and justify the markup by claiming better usability but I've already discounted usability as a strong discriminator.

Looks like Google Docs has fixed the problem with file dialog selections of many files- now I can select 10s or 100s of files and they will get queued to be uploaded properly instead of seeing a strange character.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to ask on your blog but wondering if you knew of anyone interested in selling Blue Origin stock? If so, I can be reached at corick@gmail.com

Unknown said...

Docs Storage" charters a glance. A sweat kicks Docs Storage". The expert squashes Docs Storage". My witch drags an inexperienced terror within a sample. The moderate sweeps?

interracial dating sites

STC Technologies said...

Google documents is a word editor, spreadsheet creator, document storage and collaboration tool all bundled into one easy web based application.

STC Technologies|STC Technologies