ash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Tim Churches wrote: > > > Many thanks to these respondents. I am encouraged to proceed with > > further exploration of the use of Amazon S3 for off-site encrypted > > back-up secondary storage - I'll report back to this list after the > > forthcoming weekend. > > i don't suppose you've considered the 3 gig *free* that gmail offers > with *every* account
Of course. I mentioned that in my original post - including a URL for nifty Python module which makes your Gmail accounts look like a filesystem on Linux so you just copy-and-paste to them etc. I use my Gmail accounts (yes, many tens of them) for offsite back-up of digial photos, important documents etc - all encrypted of course because part of the Gmail deal is that you allow Google to snoop on whatever goes through your Gmail account - that's what it says in the usage agreement. > given that you can invite 100 "friends" to join, even at optus with only > 5 e-mail accounts i can see 15 gigabytes of storage for nada; exetel > offers 15 e-mail accounts (= 45 gig?) Yes, although with a few disadvantages. Firstly, the largest single message attachment you can send to Gmail is 10 MB, which means that you would need to break your encrypted backup archives into chunks of that size. Possible but an extra step. And you have to get them all back if/when you need them. Secondly, Google have deliberately throttled the upload speed to Gmail to discourage people using it for bulk data storage - if you upload a big file as an email attachment, it's slow. Amazon S3 seems much, much faster in limited experiments so far. Thirdly, Google may pull the plug on using Gmail for bulk data storage at any time, particularly for encrypted data. There are rumours that they may do that as soon as they release their Gdrive (which will probably be as cheap or cheaper than Amazon S3 but probably not free). By calculating the entropy of a file, it is simple for Google to determine which files represent encrypted storage, and they may demand (or request) their remov! al from your Gmail account(s), since such use is not actually in accord with the usage policy - well, the usage policy says that you can use Gmail for whatever Google says you can use it for and they can chnage their policies at any time. By contrast, Amazon S3 (and its competitors such as OmniDrive and Google Gdrive, when they become available) are expressly designed and intended for bulk data storage. Amazon S3 supports storage of data in chunks up to 5GB each, and the only limit is 100 chunks - so half a terabyte is teh limit for one account (you can have as many accounts as you like, though). I think I'd rather pay a few dollars per month for Amazon S3 or a similar service rather than try to get something from nothing from Google Mail. Anyway, we're investigating this as a potentially convenient and very cheap means of providing offsite encrypted back-up copies for mobile and temporary (eg disease outbreak) public health data collection systems, but it occured to me that it might be useful in the general practice setting too. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
