* Sharing large files across the Internet
Sharing data across the Internet is crucial to almost every business process these days. While Web servers are great for planned content distribution and e-mail is fine for small files there will come a time when you’ll need to make, say, a file of 20M bytes or 40M bytes or more available to a group of people at short notice.
An FTP server would be an option but then you and the intended recipients would need FTP clients to send and receive the file and you’d need to configure permissions on the server. There is a much more elegant solution from Xdrive (see editorial links below), which offers Xdrive Plus Web and Xdrive Workgroup.
Xdrive Plus is a Java applet that provides a fairly intuitive interface for uploading and downloading files to Xdrive’s server as well as for announcing to other Internet users that files are waiting for them. Xdrive accounts come with a 5G-byte storage allowance that can be expanded as required.
You can set up user accounts each with its own password for other people and the first five recipients who download your file can do so without having to set up a free Xdrive account of their own. The sixth and subsequent recipients have to set up a Free Space account to be able to download.
Xdrive’s Folder Upload allows you to select multiple files or folders and upload them to your Xdrive Plus account as well as provide an address book for recipient notifications.
Xdrive Plus Desktop is an application that is part of Xdrive Plus. This component provides access to your Xdrive directly from Windows Explorer allowing access to your Xdrive storage just as you would any local drive on your computer with support for dragging and dropping files and folders from local and network drives to your Xdrive Plus account.
The Xdrive Workgroup service is similar to the Xdrive Plus product except that you can create any number of full accounts with unlimited storage. Xdrive Workgroup also includes Xdrive Workgroup Desktop (essentially identical to Xdrive Plus Desktop) for all group members.
To ensure data security, all file transfer sessions are conducted via SSL and both types of service include the ability to schedule automated backups from your PC to your Xdrive account.
Xdrive Web supports Windows with IE 5 or above and Mac OS X with Safari v.1.2.4 or above. There is no Xdrive Desktop equivalent for Macs.
Overall, Xdrive does exactly what it claims and is very easy to use and administer. My only problem with the service is that file transfers are rather slower than I would like.
Xdrive Plus with 5G bytes of storage is priced at $9.95 per month.
