Can Bitcasa scale to meet the file management needs of all users as it gains popularity?īitcasa has apparently demonstrated enough potential to attract $1.3 million in venture funding. This isn’t just another synced folder on a device, users will essentially be doing all their file management on the cloud. The constant encryption and syncing of files to the cloud could be costly in terms of system performance, for instance. On the surface of it, Bitcasa sounds remarkable, but there are still some important questions to be answered. The upshot being that if two users have an identical file in Bitcasa, the service only keeps one copy and makes it available to both users. Bitcasa uses a de-duplication algorithm along with compression technology to reduce the amount of storage space needed for each user. Those MP3s purchased from iTunes, photos, and even all those pirated movies are duplicated on many other users’ computers. Gauda explained at Disrupt that roughly 60% of individual user data is duplicated elsewhere. The key is that a user’s data is never completely unique, or even mostly unique. So how can a start-up afford to offer unlimited cloud storage out of the gate for just $10 per month? Dropbox charges that same rate for just 50GB, and they’ve been building out for a few years. This has the added benefit of making important files available offline. According to Bitcasa CEO Tony Gauda, intelligent caching will make the most frequently used content available as local cache. Larger files, like video can just be streamed without downloading. When a user needs to access a file, it is pulled down seamlessly from the Bitcasa cloud storage. All Bitcasa (or angry copyright holders) can see are encrypted bits. Before uploading anything to the cloud, content is encrypted on the local machine, meaning that Bitcasa is not in a position to know what files it is storing. On the server-side, all Bitcasa is concerned with is the 1’s and 0’s that make up the file. The service won’t be dealing with the actual files from the computer.
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