Second helping

Once your files have been copied onto the CloudBox, a secondary back-up then takes place once a day to copy everything up into the cloud. Performance here will obviously vary depending on the speed of your Internet connection, but the initial on-line backup could take hours or even days – although that’s not uncommon with most other cloud storage services either.

With a small HDD, the CloudBox is really halfway house for LaCie's on-line backup service

And it’s really those other cloud services that the CloudBox is competing with. A price tag of £179 is obviously way over the top for a mere 100GB hard disk. However, DropBox charges about $240 a year for its equivalent 100GB subscription plan – that’s roughly £150 per annum at current exchange rates, which means you’re only paying about £30 extra for the hard disk. You will need to renew that subscription at the end of each year, but at just £89 per annum, the CloudBox subscription actually works out cheaper than DropBox.

The CloudBox service isn’t as versatile as versatile as DropBox, though. It doesn’t have DropBox’s ability to automatically sync files across multiple devices, and if anything happens to the CloudBox drive itself then you need to download a separate On-line Restore program in order to retrieve your files.

Verdict

Some people will prefer a more versatile and mobile service, such as DropBox, which allows you to quickly retrieve and sync files in different locations and on different devices. The CloudBox’s on-line features are more limited, but could still work well for people who need the extra security of both local and on-line storage for relatively small amounts of important personal data. ®

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