ElephantDrive Support

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

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

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.

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...

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!

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.

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.

# posted by Outsideshot @ 10:47 AM