Bitcasa

A File storage option boasting itself as an 'infinite drive' is very brave… surely they must be at risk of huge losses. The competition is obviously fierce, with the likes of Dropbox, Sky Drive already with their own storage solutions and Amazon shortly to release a consumer end storage option of their own.

But to be honest, I have been trialing Bitcasa now for a few months, and I must say it is great value for your money. It has been a bit clunky at times but definitely lived up to its promise. It streams movies very well and integrates well across devices.

Bitcasa 'Full Review'

There are countless platforms for storing information online, but when newly launched Bitcasa arrived, promising 'infinite storage space' for only $10 a month, you better believe it made a few heads turn. Could it be true? Can Bitcasa actually be more efficient than every other cloud storage app on the web?

This may sound entirely too good to be true as it is common sense that in order to house so much information, a company would need an infinite amount of servers (which would cost more than $100 per year per account). After all, the data has to go somewhere right? It would only make sense that such a business model is severely flawed could potentially lead to Bitcasa going out of business and everyone losing their saved data.

So how does Bitcasa work?

Bitcasa uses a revolutionary file storage technique that allows for an exponential amount of data to be saved in a minimal amount of space. Their platform only saves one instance of every file, discarding any duplicates. For instance, if you were to upload the song, Paint It Black, by the Rolling Stones, but someone else has already uploaded that exact same track, Bitcasa will just use the previously stored data and discard the duplicate. This method could save an infinitesimal amount of space seeing as though the average movie can be between 2-10 gigabytes in size, and there are undoubtedly, countless movies being saved on storage applications every day.

Oh wait'?. it gets even better.

Bitcasa further breaks down files into smaller data blocks and will compare it against every other data block that is previously stored. If 2 blocks of data match up, the duplicate is discarded. We'll refer back to the Rolling Stones song for a moment. Say the track that you have uploaded is slightly different than the rest. Bitcasa will take the data that DOES match up and discard the rest, further freeing up space. In a nutshell, Bitcasa requires far less bandwidth and server space than what other platforms would require for the same amount of data being stored. With the promise of unlimited storage space, it may be a viable option for backing up entire hard drives or upload massive 10 terabyte files (approximately 10,000 gigabytes).

Unfortunately, with every great product, there are a few cons. For instance, Bitcasa is still extremely new (less than 1 year old) and has yet to add some of the more user friendly options that other cloud storage devices offer, such as sharing links to saved data that you've shared or received with friends. Another possibly alarming snafu that Bitcasa has is its claim that all data is 100% secure. Bitcasa says that all files are encrypted before ever reaching their servers. Though this may be true, it is still too early in Bitcasa's lifespan to tell if it truly is secure from hacking.

Overall, Bitcasa's upload speeds are about the same as any other cloud storage app. Although Bitcasa is young and most likely has some growing pains to overcome, it will be interesting to see how this program fairs. After all, how can you beat unlimited storage for $10 a month?