High Sierra: Hosting Success
A bit over a week ago, I solicited interest in hosting 128 Kbps MP3 versions of some audience-based recordings I’d recently made at the High Sierra Music Festival. Not surprisingly, I guess, I didn’t get any ‘takers’ 
That’s ok; this project gave me the opportunity to more closely evaluate several different free hosting services that I’d previously signed up for.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have an Apple .Mac account, but I’m already using it to host two websites that I don’t want to go down due to excessive bandwidth used by you all. I also get 500 MBytes’ worth of Yahoo! Briefcase space with my DSL account, but the 5 MByte per-file upload size limit won’t work for the payloads we’re talking about here.
HP’s recent backup offer gives you 2 GBytes of server space, but it can only be used for backup, and the only means of accessing it is via a dedicated-function standalone program. I’m not a big fan of installing obscure software on my system unless I absolutely have to, especially in a case like this when a web browser-based AJAX or Java interface to my storage space would seemingly be a feasible alternative. Mozy has the same issues.
I tried using the 25 GBytes’ worth of free MediaMax space (with 1 GByte/month download limit) that I signed up for last summer as part of an AMD LIVE! promotion, but none of the files that I upload ever show up in my account’s file management list, and neither Streamload’s technical support nor the company’s press relations representative seems to be interested in resolving my issue. I didn’t get in on Microsoft’s private beta of Windows Live Folders, and Google’s rumoured online storage service hasn’t arrived yet.
Never fear, I have two solutions for you. First off is Omnidrive. My free account gives me 1 GByte of storage and up to 5 GBytes per month of downloads from the server. So if you get an error message when you attempt to access the links that follow, it means that your peers have already gobbled up my monthly bandwidth allocation….keep reading for an alternative means of accessing the tracks. I’ve individually ZIP’d them up, frankly to force you to download them to your computer first versus simply streaming them from the Omnidrive server, in the interests of bandwidth conservation. The links:
- Animal Liberation Orchestra (65.04 MB)
- Del McCoury Band (98.23 MB)
- Del McCoury Band (encore) (3.31 MB)
- Disco Biscuits (81.9 MB)
- Les Claypool’s Fancy Band (87.57 MB)
- Yonder Mountain String Band (85.33 MB)
Alternatively, you can grab the files from my AOL Xdrive account. The free version of the service includes 5 GBytes of server space and (as far as I can tell) unlimited downloads. However, you’ll be prompted to sign up for your own free account before the Xdrive system will allow you to access the folder in which my files are housed:
Continue reading with ‘High Sierra: Tune Details‘….
Followup: Speaking of online backup, check out this Ars Technica review.
Brian Dipert commented:
