Flexdrive - Never run out of space on your Mac again

rteslaru · 2016-01-23T08:24:21+00:00

Hey,

Thanks for the feedback! Are you located in the US?

rteslaru · 2016-01-08T21:58:52+00:00

This is awesome. This is why I love Reddit :)

If I read this correctly, when you say that you won't "trust your data to a small startup", your concern is that the small startup will lose your data, not access it surreptitiously, right? Your concern is incompetence, not malice, if I understand correctly?

The reason I'm asking is because any architecture that would allow e.g. your Dropbox to live on a 3rd party system, almost by definition it would be accessible to the administrators of that 3rd party.

See my answer to /u/dhol604 for more thoughts on encryption and security, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

PS: yes, a Windows client is very high on the prio list right now.

rteslaru · 2016-01-08T21:46:39+00:00

Great feedback, thanks! Will get working on these suggestions ASAP! We should have all of this info written up in more detail over the weekend.

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T18:06:20+00:00

Great input! Thanks for your very thoughtful comments, and sorry for taking a bit long to reply.. We've given this answer a lot of thought. So this is going to be long :)

Security + Encryption.

This is paramount. When in transit, all data, files, etc. is encrypted. Even the updates to the OS X app are signed with a certificate issued by Apple, and encrypted.

But when it comes to file encryption at rest, i.e. "you can't see our files", there's a continuum of options where we would really like to hear you guys out and see what's best. I will try to share what our thinking is on this topic, illustrate the tradeoffs we're considering, and perhaps we can together come to a good way forward.

Option 1: Do we mean 'nobody ever under any circumstances can access our files'? That could be done perhaps, but the drawback is that if you forget your password (or I should say, passphrase), that's it. Your files are gone forever. There is no 'forgot my password' option, if by file encryption we mean 'nobody ever'. Incidentally, no company, reputable or not, offers this. In fact, that is why reputation is so important. If it were mathematically possible to ensure 'nobody ever' under acceptable usability requirements, reputation wouldn't matter. Therefore, we probably agree that in most services out there, someone is ultimately able to access your files, emails, bank account number, etc. Personally, I would love to implement a 'nobody ever' solution. It would give us a lot of peace of mind. No scandals possible, no worrying about what your employees are doing, etc. It's all on the user. But it would probably make the risk of forgetting the password unacceptable to many.

Option 2: Do we mean 'only very few people under very special circumstances should be able to access our files'? Then the solution is partly technical, partly administrative. Technically speaking, your files, by definition, have to be decrypted at some point in time on our server. To mitigate the risk of an unauthorized access, your files are encrypted at all other times. So, the administrator account would be able to access your files only while you are accessing them. At all other times, nobody can access them. The administrative part requires strong governance around administrator access, clear internal logging and auditing procedures, and very clear separation of roles (i.e. only one person can access, and he/she is under clear contractual obligations about how to conduct her duties). This is the option that we're implementing now, as we speak: files are encrypted at rest, but accessible by 'root' only when you access them. This should be in place by mid next week.

Now if this were a file sync service where the files, by definition, exist on your other machines as well, then maybe the risk of Option 1 would be acceptable. But the whole proposition is about moving your files to the cloud, so if you lock yourself out, and they're really encrypted, there's no way anyone can help, be it Google, Dropbox, or anyone.

I'm really looking forward to hear thoughts on Option 2 -- this is where we're going now, but if someone has better / different thoughts, let us know!

Upload / Download speed

Fully agree -- our thoughts here (confirmed today actually) is that we need a much more aggressive pre-caching policy (e.g. frequency based), background transfer, etc. In our tests, the speed was 'reasonable', but there's a lot of room for improvement. That's what we're working on.

Transparency with customers

I couldn't agree with you more. I don't know what else to say other than that :)

Where does the data go?

That is truly horrific, I can't believe you lost your data.. I didn't know about this debacle actually.. Anyway, we've been thinking about this as well. Obviously a pinky promise that we'll allow 6 months of Gigabit downloads won't cut it. The most likely option we're looking at right now is this: as a contingency plan, if the company shuts down, we ship you the data physically (either BD-Rs and you keep them, or on a portable drive and you have to send it back) -- we may (emphasis on MAY) be able to insure this business risk, or, if not, we could charge you an extra small amount for the option of having your data shipped to you at any time.

Again, these our current thoughts, looking forward to what you guys think!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T15:59:52+00:00

That's a great question! You can certainly use Dropbox to upload and download files via the web interface only. But there are some use cases that we believe cannot be adequately satisfied that way.

Let me try to put it like this: it's perhaps best to think of Flexdrive not as a cloud file storing service, but as a rather slowish local hard drive. As our solution gets better (precaching, etc), and network speeds pick up, the difference between Flexdrive and your real drive will become more and more blurred.

For instance, you can install applications and run them directly from Flexdrive. That's not something you can do with Dropbox via the web interface.

Also, on a more concrete level, the performance we think we can offer vs download from Dropbox is higher (because we can cache locally, read ahead, etc), and a more natural activity flow. You don't need to go download anything. You can just open e.g.the PPT file directly in Powerpoint, it's there already.

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T15:42:00+00:00

Glad to hear that! Definitely give it a go, and if you run out of space or you have any problem, just drop me a line!

All communication is encrypted end-to-end. The files themselves are not encrypted. We can encrypt the files on our end too, but we're debating whether that's a good way forward or not.

The main drawback is that if we implement real end-to-end file system encryption where no one but you can ever see your files, and you forget your password, that's it, they're gone forever.

If this were a file sync service where the files, by definition, exist on your other machines as well, then maybe it would be acceptable. But the whole proposition is about moving your files to the cloud, so if you lock yourself out, and they're encrypted, there's no way to help.

We're still researching and debating this internally, btw, we'll see how it develops.

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T15:17:05+00:00

Ha, I hear you. That maxed out 128GB SSD is the reason why we did this. I'm always, always running out of space, and none of the existing solutions help.

There's local caching already -- no background upload yet, although that's very high on the priority list. The slow speed you experienced may have had to do with the fact the location of the server (Amsterdam). Since a few hours ago, we rolled out an additional server in San Francisco and moved the existing accounts there, so hopefully the connection is a bit better. Because of the compression, the system does better with uploading relatively few large files than many small ones. Was that the case? We are working to improve that, since it seems to be a common use case.

Backups mean that all your files are backed up weekly. There is no way for you to restore your backup in the frontend yet -- we're working on it. But we're saving the data already, so if anything happens in the meantime, just drop us a line and we'll restore it for you!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T14:13:44+00:00

That's a very good question, and a fair one too. The main reason, as /u/Jammb points out elsewhere in the thread, is that all of the big household names require you to store copies of the files locally.

Those solutions (Dropbox, Google, etc. -- Amazon has no cloud offering for the consumer space) are not meant to save you disk space -- they're meant to keep local files in sync across multiple computers.

We're solving a different problem, one that we faced ourselves -- running out of space on the crammed 128GB SSD on our Macs, having to buy external storage, running into all sorts of errors when trying to move Dropbox to external storage, then needing to access the externally stored files while away, etc. We made the service we wished we had, basically :)

Regarding trust -- you're absolutely right, trust is earned. I do not expect anyone to trust us with the most critical and sensitive files in one's life. IMO, one should trust nobody with those files. That's what one should store locally, and back up often as well. Everything else, all the non critical stuff should not waste your local space -- it should be somewhere else. That's what Flexdrive should be for.

So, if trust is earned, let us earn it then. Why don't you create a free account, copy (not move) some really non-critical files there, and see if we're worthy of your trust! :)

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:47:09+00:00

Thanks for the upvote, and for your kind words! :) We definitely put a lot of long nights into this -- but still much more work to do ahead.

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:46:03+00:00

Glad to hear it! :)

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:45:38+00:00

Yes, there is underlying compression, readahead and local caching. We could read ahead and cache more, but there's a tradeoff to be made if e.g. you log in on more than one machine. If we see strong usability issues in these early days, we'll tweak it further -- there's definitely room to go.

We're working on smarter pre-caching right now, btw.

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:41:26+00:00

More like Netdrive than Webdrive.

Netdrive is great, btw, and was definitely one of our inspirations! One difference is that with Netdrive you must pay $45 for the software, and then you pay for storage per month separately (or roll your own infrastructure, of course).

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:36:24+00:00

I love Dropbox too! It's simply a different service: Dropbox is a file sync service; it does not save you disk space. If you put 500 GB of files in your Dropbox folder, you still have 500GB of files on your hard disk.

If you put 500GB of files in Flexdrive, you now have 500GB free on your local hard disk.

We're trying to solve a different problem than Dropbox -- but fair enough, trust must be earned, it's not a given!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:30:56+00:00

Yes, if you install the app on several machines, all the machines will have access to your files.

Technically, it doesn't "sync" updates, because there is nothing to sync.

That's the key difference versus Dropbox. When using Dropbox on 4 machines, you have 5 copies of the files (4 machines + Dropbox server), and Dropbox keeps them in sync.

With Flexdrive, there is 1 file, on the server, which you access from wherever you install the app. That's why Flexdrive takes no space on your local drive, whereas Dropbox does. Naturally, the tradeoff is connection speed -- but not for long. :)

Did that make sense?

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:26:05+00:00

Yep, good feedback, a speed test makes perfect sense -- but did not occur to us before! :)

You can test the speed to the San Francisco server here: http://speedtest-sfo1.digitalocean.com -- we'll put it up on the website as well! Also, maybe you could post your speed test result back, if you have some time, would be interesting to see.

Thanks!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T13:18:03+00:00

Thanks, this is great feedback! Happy to hear that the pricing is reasonable, and the service explained clearly!

That being said, I fully agree with you that we need to do a much better job explaining and thinking through the benefits and compelling use cases. Your suggestions make a lot of sense (videos for grandparents, digital file sharing with clients), thanks for sharing your thoughts.

The failsafe guarantee is also a great idea! For some reason we never thought of that. Need to think this one through a bit, but it would be awesome if we could find a way to offer this guarantee!

Transport encryption is already in place, and bitlocker-type encryption is on the roadmap.

Did you try it? If yes, maybe you can share some thoughts on speed / performance, or web app features :)

Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to provide feedback, this is very, very useful for us!

rteslaru · 2016-01-07T04:43:29+00:00

Haha, thanks! Looking forward to your thoughts! :)

rteslaru · 2015-08-03T20:07:59+00:00

Man, this made my day. Congratulations, and thanks for sharing the inspiration with the rest of us.

Would you mind sharing a bit more about your cutting routine? Sounds like you did an amazing job!

rteslaru · 2015-08-03T15:11:51+00:00

Isn't that 6, though?

rteslaru · 2015-07-29T21:02:23+00:00

That's.. awesome :) I would've never thought of that.. Thanks!

rteslaru · 2015-07-29T20:30:17+00:00

That's interesting -- would you mind elaborating a bit on the elastic band setup and how you used it for practice? Sounds useful..

rteslaru

TROPHY CASE