Experience with OnlineStorageSolutions???

<p>I've decided that in addition to backing up to external hard drives and DVDs, I'd like to also have an online backup for archival purposes, for when (not if) the HDs fail. I know that online archival storage has been discussed in several other threads but I'd like to hear if anyone has had good or bad experience with onlinestoragesolutions.com? It seems too good to be true. Unlimited online storage for $19/year. This beats most of the competition by about an order of magnitude. Mozy.com seems to be a competitor but there are a ton of bad reviews out there for mozy on the restore end. Anyone have any experience restoring a HD with onlinestoragesolutions? Or are there better sites? Thanks for any help!</p>

 

<p>I've been checking them out also. I believe they are the same company as iicinternet dot com. Did a google search on them and found some reviews that are not too great also. Seen a few complaints with double billing, lack of support etc. etc. although one customer of theirs in Singapore gave them a good report. Still thinking about trying them but will use a temporary credit card number which will prevent them from billing me again. Hope this helps.</p>

<p>I'm just getting started with onlinestoragesolutions.com <br /> So far I am <strong>very </strong> happy with them. <br /> Certainly, no billing issues (that I know of).<br>

Customer support has been more than adequate (sometimes they just fix a problem and don't send an e-mail reply).</p>

<p>I'm probably not a typical user, so filter my comments appropriately. I've been around UNIX network-communications for 20 years, so the fact that they use standard protocols to connect was a <strong>big </strong> plus for me. I also needed quite a bit of space, so their pricing model is a big win and I'm more than happy to put up with a bit of hassle for it.</p>

<p>For the past couple of months, I've been backing up my PC's photo-archive disks to them using the <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a> rsync program and a short shell-script to restart the program when it dies. The outbound network connection at my house has been pegged at it's max. speed (somewhere between 1 and 2 Mb/s) for most of the last two months, so I have a significant experience despite a short time with the service.</p>

<p>Most of the time (~90%) things work <strong>very </strong> smoothly.</p>

<p>I've seen a number of temporary errors. Perhaps the most common is that the servers simply go away in DNS; you can't connect via rsync, ftp, or their web-client. I don't know if they are doing maintenance or what, but everything comes back in a few hours. After that, I get the "No space left on device" error occasionally, but in general they re-allocate things the next morning and I'm back up and running.</p>

<p>Perfect, no. Functional, yes. Great value: absolutely!</p>

<p><strong>Update:</strong> I spoke just a day too soon...</p>

<p>It's now been a week since I could upload any files. No response to any e-mails...<br>

I'm not as angry as <a href="http://onlinestoragesolutionsucks.com/">this guy</a> , but I'd have to say the various negative comments about onlinestoragesolution.com/net posted around seem to be true.</p>

<p><strong>Another update:</strong> last night I was able to start uploading files again. Things seem to be back to "normal"...</p>

<p>Hi Geoff - I'm curious to see if you're still having a positive experience with onlinestoragesolutions? They caught my eye because it appears they allow you to backup from a mapped/network drives, such as a Network Attached Storage (NAS.) However while reading their TOS (http://www.onlinestoragesolution.com/terms.html) I noticed that their service is not really "unlimited"..</p>

<p><em>5. The use of the service for backup of servers <strong>limited to 500GB </strong> of total usage per account.</em><br>

<em><br /> </em><br>

Even at $15/yr (using paypal) I can get 1.5 TB for $45/yr which is still less than the $50 - 60 that most other services offer and I can back up my NAS. Now it's just a matter of reputation when compared to the other services like Mozy, BackBlaze, etc..</p>

<p>Also what are you using for encryption? I noticed that just about all the other online-backup solutions require you to install "their" client which seems to do this for you.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!<br>

David</p>

 

<p>This is Beth and if you have called onlinestoragesolution for help<br>

you have spoke with me already. If you have any problem at all<br>

drop us a line and I can send you my personal e-mail address and<br>

cell phone number. Nothing is perfect and time changes all things.<br>

support@onlinestoragesolution.com Subject line ATTN: Beth contact info...<br>

I will send you back my number and personal e-mail address... I work here<br>

and know that it works, I use it myself.</p>

<p>Online Storage Solution has been the most horrifying Storage Solution EVER. The service is just terrible.<br /><br />Well, I'm here to tell what might happen to you if you go ahead and sign up with Online Storage Solution thinking you're getting a good deal. Take my advice, do not register for this service. You'll end up regretting it forever.<br /><br />When I initially signed up for Online Storage Solution, I was satisfied with the service despite the numerous outages when you can't access data at all, upload errors etc. But then I was happy that the service was very cheap and I'm getting a good deal for my money.<br />There was lots of downtime, making it difficult to access your files at all times. They would keep on upgrading to new servers and plan to abandon the old servers, so you, as the customer, would have to follow up and push the 'customer support' to get you onto a new server or else you'd have problems. Lots of times, their disk gets full and you will need to contact support to reallocate the storage so you can continue uploading; that was a real pain while uploading lots of data. Also their software had lots of problems, I don't blame Online Storage Solution for that, because its not theirs, but then that is what they recommended and it never could finish a backup for me. Even after countless emails to support, I could never backup my computer through rsync. Well, I resorted to FTP and manually did everything.<br /><br />Oh yeah, the 'customer support' which they don't outsource (as said on their website) is made of one person named Stephen Bennet. Many people here say Online Storage Solution is run from a garage, while, it might sound very stupid; trust me, once you become a member of Online Storage Solution you'll know why people say that.<br />You have to wait for more than 25 minutes every time to reach a guy who is rude and wants to get rid of you as soon as possible. I'll come to that later.<br />The support will rarely respond to you. You'll have to send countless emails and you'll be lost in tracking and keeping up with the complaint for so long, you'll realize you'd have saved more time and effort by paying a little more to another provider.<br /><br />Well I lived with all of this, I was still "Its alright, the service is cheap and does most of what it says", until....<br />....I lost my files, more than 200 gigs of them, completely; they disappeared from my account.<br />As I said Online Storage Solution keeps upgrading servers for which you have to keep contacting support to move you to a new one.<br />I had my files copied to the new server with the files on the old server intact. I thought, "Well atleast I have my files on the old server". But I realized I was wrong, new server and old server, ALL my files, every single one of them vanished, suspiciously.<br /><br />I filed a ticket late January and I'm still struggling with the support to get the files back, which is probably never going to happen. What I've gone through was a horrible experience, still horrible knowing that all the files I stored with them are gone forever; I trusted them and they lose every single file I stored with them. So much for the redundant storage (mentioned on their website). Its so redundant and reliable, that it managed to lose both my sets of backups at the same time!<br /><br />I've sent numerous emails, which don't usually get responded to, for which I had to call them up continuously and listen to their hold music for more than 25 minutes every time. I've attached the ticket history. The Steve guy (One man tech support) assured me TWENTY TWO TIMES that my files would be restored. That never happened.<br /><br />Yesterday, I had the worst experience ever. Now instead of the Steve guy replying to my ticket and giving me false answers. He said Chris, the owner, was working on this issue. He asked me to get him on an extension, which I could not reach. After another 30 minutes of waiting on phone and getting to talk to Steve, he THEN tells me that he is on a conference call and would call me up as soon as he's done in another 30 minutes. Yeah, if Chris or Steve would call me back, pigs would fly that instant. Expecting their tech support to call you back is like expecting the president to have coffee with you for breakfast at your house.<br /><br />I called up in a half hour because I didn't receive a call nor could I reach Chris, Steve said he was still on the conference call with his "provider" and I'd have to wait FOUR MORE HOURS to get him (which didn't happen, and a call for four hours??). I exclaimed that it was too long and that they've been putting me off for a long time, not hours, not days, not weeks, MONTHS! The guy got angry and told me that they're trying to recover the hard drives (so much for their secure storage). I told him that you've been saying that for the past two months (22 times!) He gets more angry and literally screams at me insultingly "Have you been listening to me? I said it'll take 10-15 days." Dude you've said that TWENTY TWO times and it never happened. He shouts at me like I work for him and he's paying me. I paid for my service and he's the one scolding me for losing my files.<br />Moreover, he talks like losing your files isn't a big deal, like its routine and normal.<br /><br />He told me that he'll call me back, again never did, I tried calling after four hours. And guess what? Tech support closes even before their normal working hours (which are short themselves for a support department).<br /><br />That's it, I cant even reach them till Monday. Their great tech support is only Monday to Friday. If you have a problem or the server goes down Friday Night. Good luck, not gonna get fixed till Monday.<br /><br />Bottom line:<br />Worst service ever.<br />Buy this service, not only if you have money to waste but also lots and lots of precious time and of course, tolerance to tech support shouting insultingly at you.<br />And of course, lots and lots of patience.<br />Pay and go through what I've experienced and get severely ripped off, even after getting warned.<br /><br />This service is unethical, unprofessional and unreliable. JUST NOT WORTH THE TIME, MONEY, PATIENCE and EFFORT.<br /><br />Again trust me, NOT WORTH IT.</p>

<p>I totally agree. This is robery.<br>

I had problems with passwords on one of the interfaces (ajax), plus troubles to move files, to upload some of them with strange error codes on my ftp. So I send an email (only for ajax in the beginning).<br>

It took me 8 messages to get a new username. And 24 messages to get my data copied from my old account to new one but I lost more of 95% of my data in the move (400GB lost, 2000 files lost). And now, they are asking again what is my username so they can fix everything.<br>

Well, you will find below the last email I have just sent (I have changed my logins). I do not copy all the emails because it would take me too much time but believe me, these guys (or this guy) are unbelievable !<br>

<em> ____________</em><br>

<em>Is it a joke? This is the 27th message we are exchanging. My problem is not solved and you are asking me again and again my username, and then it will be the server name, and then username again !</em><br /><em>There is a tracking number ! Why don't you follow it ?</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>Send me the email address of the staff member you will follow my incident and the email address of the support responsible. And from now on I will only send my email to these people so I do not need to give my username every 2 messages!</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>This was the content of message #18 (since then data have been "moved" but 400GB are missing):</em><br /><em>On OLS18. I already mentionned this in the first email I sent (2nd February). Now we are almost 1 month 1/2 and 18 messages later and it is still not resolved !</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>So, I resume the situtation and this will be the last email I am sending to you. If the problem is not solved in the coming days, I will publish all the conversation we had with the detailed content and dates on all the websites where you are referenced. I will let know everybody that your so-called "service" is nothing but robbery.</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>I have a problem with the AJAX interface (but no problem with FTP/FTPES/Webdav).</em><br /><em>Login: my_oldusername</em><br /><em>Server: ols18.com</em><br /><em>(info from the 1st message: 2-Feb)</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>You created me a new login (with new password):</em><br /><em>Login: my_newusername</em><br /><em>Server: ols18.com</em><br /><em>(info from the 8th message)</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>I can login with this new account on Ajax but I can not access to all the data I have already updated with my original account</em><br /><em>(info from the 9th message). You proposed to copy the data (11th message).</em><br /><em>And from then, nothing happened except writting emails to ask always the same things.</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>One thing is sure: if my problem is not solved quickly (so I can use the service I paid for) and if everything is not perfect after this story, I will never ever give you one more dollar (in addition to sharing my experience with your "service" and your "support" widely on the web).</em><br /><em> </em><br /><em>This is your last chance, take it.</em><br>

<em>____________</em></p>

<p>OMG! I am having TERRIBLE issues with them too!<br>

HALF my files are missing. Within every folder/subfolder, exactly half the files are gone.<br>

When I emailed (4/21/12), they said the files would be back in 3 hrs (they were re-synching). I gave them 3 days and nothing. So I emailed again. Their last response was that they would let me know when my files were restored. That was on 4/26. I have not heard anything since and my files aren't back and they aren't responding to emails.<br>

Now, I do NOT trust them with my files. Thank goodness I did not NEED the files due to a drive crash. I only discovered accidently that files were missing. At this point I just want my money back.<br>

<strong>DO NOT USE</strong> onlinestoragesolutions!</p>

<p>Not bad, no support though...Good for students at best.</p>