The (almost) free lunch promised by Bitcasa of unlimited cloud storage for just $99/year is coming to an end, and the company has also informed users that they will need to manually migrate all data to a new backend by 15th November or it will be deleted.
Bitcasa was able to offer low-cost “infinite storage” because it figured that most users would have only a relatively small proportion of unique content. As I mentioned in my comparative review:
The company estimates that most people have no more than 25GB of unique content on their computers, the rest – music, movies, etc – being content held in common with other people. For that data, Bitcasa stores only one copy of the file, with the rest of our backups containing a pointer to it.
But, says, Bitcasa, some people have been “abusing” the facility, which seems to be a reference to businesses storing large quantities of data in what is supposed to be a personal account.
While that may seem understandable, what is rather less so is giving users such a short time to migrate their data before it is lost, especially when the company’s support document recommends that people do this one folder at a time.
We recommend that you do not drag all your files and folders at once. Instead, drag one folder at a time and wait for it to complete before moving onto the next file/folder.
Those on unlimited subscriptions are being offered a choice of 1TB for the same $99/year, or 10TB for a rather eye-watering $999/year. The company says that only 0.5% of its subscribers have more than 1TB of data.
There is an attempt on Reddit to start a class-action lawsuit against the company.
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Yea, I’m pretty annoyed about this one. So much for my steady uploads over the past year. I probably have 400GB of lossless rips and other files backup up to the service. Comcast likes to cap my data at 300GB/month, and Bitcasa has given me less than a month to take it all down if I want to keep it. Annoying. Can I have my $100 back?
Fortunately, I am not (yet/to my knowledge) on a capped plan with Comcast. I just started with the in July and there was no mention of it. I do, however, check my usage regularly, if only because I know how long “unlimited” lasts these days (Only long enough to get mass adoption and reliance on said service) and never having a tool to check before, I had no idea.
July I used 211 GB, but that was from 7/15 – 7/30.
August I used 321 GB
September was 437 GB
October to date I am at 320 GB
I do notice on the usage tool it states the following:
Your usage is measured starting 1st of every month and is displayed in the column labeled “Used”. Also for your convenience, the history of your last 3 months usage is displayed in the bar chart below labeled “Usage History”. For more information and frequently asked questions, please click here.
Note:enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended
Clicking through, it looks like certain markets are trying different things. Personally not in one of those markets, but I have their 105 Mb plan, so it looks like, where they are testing, this plan gets 600 GB per month. The $10/50 GB overage seems reasonable, but not sure about the caps. I only have a few months of data points.
I have a feeling as more of us cut cable tv out, tiered data plans will fill that “void” in the cable companies ledger.
I’m very annoyed, even if I have “only” around 200GB, mostly pictures and personnal videos. For me this is a showstopper for Bitcasa. I’m considering switching to OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or Hubic.
But I only have 3 weeks to make my choice and backup all my stuff ! Insane.
http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcasa/comments/2k6qj3/class_action_against_bitcasa/
Thanks, Ronald, I’ve added that to the piece.
I use BackBlaze (http://www.backblaze.com) to back everything up to. $5/month (when purchased for an entire year), with unlimited backups. i have about 3TB of information backed up there currently, and it took just over two months to upload it. You can set the outgoing bitrate tho, in case you’re up against a throttle wall. This isn’t quite the same model as Bitcasa, but if you’re just looking for a place to store your stuff, BackBlaze is awesome.
Another happy Backblaze user.
Send complaints to:
Kyle Pererra
Online Community Specialist at Bitcasa
Kyle@bitcasa.com
Allen Lai
Director, Technical Support at Bitcasa
Allen@bitcasa.com
Brian E. Taptich
CEO at Bitcasa
Brian@bitcasa.com
David Lai
VP of Engineering at Bitcasa
David@bitcasa.com
Luke Behnke
VP of Product at Bitcasa
Luke@bitcasa.com
Bitcasa’s press release promises “unlimited” “forever” storage.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130517084305/https://www.bitcasa.com/press/bitcasa-comes-out-of-beta/
That’s a shame. I’ve been using bitcasa since the beginning (infinite plan). Last month, I didn’t have time to use their services and checked my account last day and notice that I couldn’t log into the system.
I thought that it was a problem with password or something not really important so I decided to contact bitcasa support. That was a great surprise to read their reply. They told me that all my datas have been removed because I didn’t take any actions before migration date.
The problem is that I didn’t receive any email from their services (nothing in spambox) and they took the liberty to remove all my important files within 3 weeks. They could have least wait until the end of the contract (June 2015)!
The service they provide is just a joke and I can’t believe this. I am completely disgusted.
Jon