ElephantDrive Support

Scheduled Maintenance - March 20, 2007, 3 PM - 7 PM Pacific Time

2007-03-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Just wanted to make sure that ElephantDrive users and blog readers know that we will be conducting Scheduled Maintenance procedures today, from 3-7 Pacific Time. We’ll be adding more computing power to our infrastructure and further expanding our storage solutions. We hope to be back to full operational capacity in less time than we’ve alloted.

Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing us at support@elephantdrive.com.

The Team at ElephantDrive

Service Upgrade Today: 12/23

2006-12-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

Apologies in advance, but we are going to be doing some scheduled maintenance today, and the service will be offline for a few hours. The good news is that when we come back up, the speed, reliability, and security of the service will be better than ever.

Please check the web site for an estimate on when things will be back to normal.

Thanks again for your support and patience during our testing.

The ElephantDrive Team

Launch Lockdown...

2006-11-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

To the extent that it isn't already painfully obvious, we here at the ElephantDrive factory have had our heads down in development, trying to fix the bugs that you have all so dutifully submitted to us and expand the platform's functionality to a point where we are providing a simple, secure, robust, and valuable service. Apologies for the radio silence on the blog.

We did escape for a couple of days to attend O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. While it was exciting to see so much enthusiasm around the "web as platform", the programs and companies presenting there too often lacked substance and were interested in Web 2.0 primarily for its buzz marketing potential...

Highlights: Jeff Bezos' keynote (biased by the fact that it included a mention of ElephantDrive), Fox Interactive Media Chief Ross Levinsohn's likening of Brad Greenspan to a happless Mike Tyson opponent, and, of course, Lou Reed and Sweet Jane.

We're heads down again. If you've submitted a bug or a question, you can rest assured that we are reviewing it and will respond as quickly as humanly possible. Thanks again to all of you who have stuck with us through a long beta period. We're going to make everything worth your while when we launch the service this year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Team at ElephantDrive

We Run Great on Intel vPro!

2006-09-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Back in June we were approached by the software development group at Intel, as they were looking for a compelling platform to demonstrate the power of their context-aware Mobility SDK. The Mobility SDK gives programmers simple access and status information of low level devices such as batteries, memory, CPU, WiFi signal strength, and network connectivity.

As we are aiming to offer our users an application that is continuously protecting your data, its extremely important that we do it in a way that doesn't effect your normal computing experience and doesn't exhaust your system resources (I believe anyone who has tried to find a reachable power outlet for their laptop at an airport can empathize). We made an effort to write our own interfaces into system devices, but it quickly became clear that we were losing focus on the core product. By using the Mobility SDK, ElephantDesktop is able to access system information simply and it's able to intelligently respond to various thresholds and system alerts so that it can throttle down its processes in the event that you're losing network connectivity, battery power, available memory, or other computing critical resources.

The integration was a success, and we demonstrated it alongside Intel in July at the Mashup University in Mountain View, CA (ElephantDrive also took home honors as one of the top mashups of the year). We'll be releasing a Mobility-enabled version of ElephantDesktop to our beta users before the end of September.

For now, we've been accepted into the "Runs Great on Intel vPro" logo program, and we'll soon be displaying the logo proudly on our site.Keep the feedback coming and we'll continue to work around the clock to provide you with the best storage and data management service on the net.

This week's random reason to back up...

2006-08-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is a true story, and a great reason to make sure your data is backed up - right now. A friend mine just had his laptop computer (it actually belonged to his girlfriend, significantly complicating things) run over by a car. RUN OVER BY A CAR.

He and his girlfriend were visiting from out of town. As they arrived from the airport, my buddy assumed the role of gentlemanly Sherpa and loaded up nearly every bag in sight on his way in the house. Chivalry is apparently not completely dead - yet. Coming across the driveway, his hosts shouted down and welcomed him after spying him through the second floor window. They actually launched directly into a conversation through the window, and after a sentence or two he put down a couple of the bags and stepped forward.

Cue the theme music from Jaws...

The neighbors use the same driveway. As they spoke, my friend had the sensation that something wrong was happening, but couldn't quite tell what. Then he realized that an SUV was backing down the path. He turned and tried to flag down the driver, but she was looking over he shoulder as she backed up -- only stopping when she heard his voice and an awful crunching sound (the sound of an LCD display being crushed under 3500 pounds of steel). We're still trying to see if the disk can be recovered, but fortunately the data was securely backed up an a separate hard drive - he thinks. He has to check when he gets home (and until then he's out of luck - yet another reason that online backup and storage is superior to other methods). He is, needless to say, a recent convert to the religion of ElephantDrive and our newest herd member.

This sort of stuff really happens. Back it up. Right now.

Scheduled Maintenance and Launch Coming Soon!

2006-08-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Herd,

In our renewed effort to keep the blog updated, our weekly entry has some news.

1. Today we're performing system maintenance on the ElephantDrive server infrastructure. We've been adding disks and processing power as quickly as we can to accomodate the overwhelming response from our beta test. Today's tasks should help to improve performance and availability. We expect the total downtime to be between 12 Noon and 1PM PST.

2. Subscription services are launching by November. This will coincide with a new release of the website and desktop software, including many of the suggestions and feature requests garnered from the beta program, including:

Deeper Windows Integration (Mapped Drives)
Web Upload/Download
Permanent URLs for files
Large File Support
API access to ElephantDrive's Web Services Engine Trunx
And a veritable galaxy full of fixes, upgrades, and feature adds...

Also, as some of you have written to us have learned, in addition to providing 1GB accounts for free forever, we intend to maintain free accounts of unlimited size after beta for a period of time based on the date of your registration. If you haven't signed up yet, for pete's sake, do it now!

Thanks again and keep the feedback coming.

ElephantDrive

Back and blogging again...

2006-08-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

A user recently wrote in to us with concerns about the somewhat erratic posting to this blog, and I thought I'd kick off our new commitment to keeping the blog fresh by posting a snippet of the repsonse we sent to him...

"We've been less active than we would like to be on the blog -- this is a result of our team's focused effort to improve the software service and respond individually to customer service inquiries.

We continue to operate in beta because we continue to make significant improvements to our software -- the sort of improvements that need to be watched carefully to ensure they are functioning properly. We are committed to keeping the service free of charge and offered under the "in beta" disclaimer until we are confident that our users will be recieving world class consumer software.

Also, clearly, we need to do a better job on our blog, but we have found that users respond better (and in more detail) to individual responses."

From now on, we are going to do a better job of updating the blog, both with user comments and feedback, and answers to questions.

More to come...

Digging out...

2006-05-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

Its safe to say that we here at the ElephantDrive factory have an entirely new respect for the site digg.com. We were featured prominently on their homepage this morning (http://digg.com/links/ElephantDrive:_Free_Unlimited_Storage). While it looks like a bunch of users didn't actually 'dig' us, it did seem to be one of the more active items, with 1,155 "diggs" as of 6:45 PM PST.

So what have we learned? Well, first, we need some more iron in our datacenter. That is already happening. Second, this is a product that folks feel strongly about and need and want badly. Also, Mac users /really/ dislike being left out of product launches :).

So, apologies for the availability problems, we're going to hunker down and continue to make the platform more stable, more secure, and faster... Thanks a million to everyone who provided constructive feedback. We love our users, and will be slavishly fixing problems and integrating your suggestions in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

The ElephantDrive Staff

System Upgrade - Some Objects May Be Temporarily Unavailable

2006-04-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings to the herd!

Exciting times at the ElephantDrive factory -- we are upgrading to an even larger storage infrastructure! Basically, the response from users has been overwhelmingly positive and people are really filling up their Trunks. In order to continue to provide the best service possible, we'll be migrating to a new, state-of-the-art back end.

What does this mean to you? Well, the service will continue to be available, but there may be brief periods during the next few days where some objects will not be available for download or restore. The data is still safe and sound, but it will be temporarily inaccessible during portions of the migration. This process should be transparent to all of our users, but if you experience any difficulties please email us at support@elephantdrive.com.

Thanks for your support!

User Q&A - Limits, Security, and Bandwidth Usage

2006-04-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

Q: Is there a limit to the number or size of files that I can backup?
A: No. ElephantDrive has carefully architected its storage systems to provide a virtually limitless amount of storage to our users. There are no constraints in terms of the number of files or the total amount of storage that an individual user can use. That said, while we aren’t currently restricting the size of an individual file to be stored, there may be limitations not related to ElephantDrive in processing files larger than 5GB.

Q: What is the allotted disk space per customer?
A: During our beta period, we’re offering free 5GB accounts. As mentioned above, there will be no limitation once the service is officially launched.

Q: Are files encrypted? What type of security is in place to protect files?
A: Securing the data in your ElephantDrive is our top priority. Every file that is transferred and stored to ElephantDrive is encrypted using the AES (Rijndael) algorithm with keys either randomly supplied by ElephantDrive or by you as a user. Additionally, ElephantDrive is physically secured in a state of the art datacenter. If you would like to learn more, you can read about ElephantDrive’s data security philosophy by clicking here: http://www.elephantdrive.com/help/faq.aspx#qSecurity

Q: Is there metering on uploads or downloads for a given day or month?
A: We’re not enforcing upload/download limit policies during the beta period, and don’t foresee enabling them after the product launches. That said, ElephantDrive maintains detailed records of all transfers, and will contact users who meet or approach an excessive use threshold (i.e. it appears someone is abusing the system).

User Q&A - Mac OS X Support

2006-03-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

Q: Do you have any plans on supporting the Mac OS X platform anytime soon?

A: Yes. By June, we'll offer a platform independent version of our desktop software utilizing Java. Also, by mid-April, you will be able to access, restore, and share files to Mac users via the web interface. Lastly, if you are in a mixed platform environment, ElephantDrive will currently recognize Mac and Linux filesystems mounted to Samba shares on Windows clients, and transfer them accordingly.

User Q&A Continued...

2006-03-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Q: I want to have a library where I can issue accounts to people that would share some files. However, I want only some accounts to have access to some information and others to other information. Can I do this with your service?

A: In the coming weeks, we will be releasing a version of ElephantDrive that will include the ability to directly and securely share individual files and directories with other users and will provide permission levels on that basis (e.g. an individual user may be afforded read/write, read, or browse authorization on files and directories that you have shared). You will be able to initiate the process by simply providing an email address for the person you want to share with, selecting the file and/or directories to be shared (via the web or ElephantDesktop application), and providing an "expiration date" or designating the share as permanent. We are considering extending this functionality to small user groups. In addition, later versions of ElephantDrive will allow users to "publish" their files and content to permanent URLs, like: http://username.elephantdrive.com/video.
NOTE: By the terms of our End User License Agreement (EULA), sharing and/or publishing of copyrighted material are expressly prohibited.

ElephantDrive Support News

2006-03-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

To the faithful herd,

In an effort to provide the most stable and available online storage service on the internet, ElephantDrive is migrating to a new state of the art datacenter in Southern California. We expect to complete the migration by the end of this week (3/26).

Until then, ElephantDrive systems may be a little slower than usual in responding, and for a short period of time on Friday (3/24) we'll be shutting down the service and site entirely. Again, this will only be temporary, and all of your files will be securely available from our new datacenter in short order.

We'll be posting progress updates to this blog regularly so check back often.

Warmest Regards,

ElephantDrive Support

More User Q&A

2006-03-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Q: What’s the deal – is ElephantDrive really free? Are you going to try to jack up the prices once my data is stored? What if I decide I don’t want to pay?
A: ElephantDrive is free, for now. We are temporarily offering the service without cost to the user in the hopes of getting useful feedback and making it a better product.
ElephantDrive will ultimately be supported by subscription fees. We aren’t trying to give the impression that ElephantDrive will be free forever, especially for large amounts of storage – we may, however, support smaller amounts for free on an ongoing basis.
Pricing isn’t yet finalized, but you may rest assured it will be competitive – that is, as good or better than existing offerings. In addition to providing the best software product possible, we are engineering our systems to be “storage agnostic” so we can easily utilize the cheapest storage available that is still reliable and redundant. As we find cost savings, we will pass them on to our subscribers.
If you do decide to participate but don’t want to continue as a paid subscriber after the end of the beta, we will maintain your data for at least 90 days and give you the opportunity to download or restore it.

Q: My data is precious – how do I know that ElephantDrive will be around to protect it?
A: We agree – your data is precious. It’s why we developed ElephantDrive. We’ve constructed a business model and technology platform that will provide security and access for your data because it is so important.
We know that the success of ElephantDrive hinges on our ability to plan ahead for every possible contingency, especially the unpleasant ones. Every decision we make considers the worst-case scenario. As a result, we have structured our software and storage systems on the assumption that anything that can go wrong, will. Our business model and financial backing are based on the assumptions, consequently we can say…
… We can’t guarantee with 100% certainty that this business will be successful. But we can guarantee that in the unlikely event we are forced to discontinue service, ElephantDrive Customer Support will ensure that you will be able to retrieve your data in a timely manner.

More User Q&A

2006-03-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

Q: How do you delete files uploaded in error?
A: As ElephantDrive is primarily concerned with /protecting/ your files (even inadvertent deletes) we've included a "Trash" feature which operates much like the Recycle Bin in Windows. You may trash your unwanted files by clicking (from the home screen):
Look at all my stuff -> View In Explorer
This should provide you with a familiar Windows Explorer-style interface with the contents of your Trunk, or remote drive, on top and the contents of your PC below. Select the items you wish to trash in the upper right hand box and click the red "X" button on the upper left hand side.

New Ways to Contact ElephantDrive Support!

2006-03-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

In an effort to provide the most responsive customer service in the marketplace, we've added a couple of new ways to get in touch with ElephantDrive.

Skype: ElephantDrive
AIM: ElephantDrive
Phone: 310.933.5626

Use them well!

ElephantDrive Support

User Q&A

2006-03-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

Q: How much free storage do you provide?
A: ElephantDrive is currently in beta (which means we haven’t fully launched it yet). We’re offering free 5GB accounts throughout this period. When the service is formally launched we will continue to offer free accounts, most likely 1 GB in capacity.

Q: If I back up the same file each night will the backup automatically overwrite the current file that is stored on your system?
A: As advertised, ElephantDrive “never forgets.” During each backup, we will only transfer your file if it has changed since you last backed it up. Assuming that it has, we back up the file and preserve the old file as a “versioned copy.” The next version of the ElephantDesktop software (due out by the end of next week) will allow you to browse and restore these copies.

Q: Can I sequentially over a period of a week back up the same file and keep it on your system as a unique file for each day? After a week say the “Monday” copy gets overwritten the following Monday.
A: By default, ElephantDrive will securely store all versions of your files. In short order, we will enable functionality that will allow you to manage the number of versions and / or the duration of time they are stored.

Welcome!

2006-02-15T23:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the official ElephantDrive Support blog! The goal of this blog is to create an online space where individuals can help make ElephantDrive a better place.

This blog will be one of the best places to visit during the early testing of ElephantDrive. We are hoping users will post their problems and questions here so that the software developers can quickly and effectively addres them, and so that other users can learn from the early experiences and even help out.

Please post your feedback or any issue you might encounter with our product on this blog.

Thank you for your help and support