

Spideroak One Backup
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SpiderOak provides an easy, secure and consolidated online backup, storage, access, sharing & sync tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian & Fedora). SpiderOak offers a different approach to online backup, synchronization, and sharing.
License model
- Paid • Proprietary
Application types
Country of Origin
United States
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
Features
Spideroak One Backup News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent News
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- POX added Spideroak One Backup as alternative to OxiCloud
- Ituaf added Spideroak One Backup as alternative to BUNKR
- K0RR added Spideroak One Backup as alternative to UploadNow.io
- K0RR added Spideroak One Backup as alternative to MixDrop
- versiobit added Spideroak One Backup as alternative to Versiobit
Comments and Reviews
Why you need something like this
Why SpiderOak is different (to mainstream services)
Because Dropbox and their ilk use encryption "at rest" only (ie you send them your data, then they encrypt it using keys _they_have). That means they can de-crypt your data, read it, pass it on to others. That means requests for your data from government surveillance agencies become matters of legal dispute. With Spideroak, giving up your data is only a matter of technological impossibility.
Spideroak encrypts your data on your computer, then sends it to their servers. They don't know your passwords, can't read your data. Nice. (Well... they can see what folders you have. But not the files.) What this means is that 1) your data is far more private, 2) if a hacker hacks their servers, it's ok. Because all the hacker will get is stuff he/she can't read.
Spideroak also protects you against ransomware, nasty software that might infect your computer, encrypt your data with its own password and hold it hostage until you pay to get it unlocked. If you have Spideroak, this is no problem. You can restore your data from a version just before the ransomware struck. Easy peasy.
Spideroak's competitors
Key to Spideroak's model is the idea that you hold the key to the encryption. (Don't lose them; use a password manager like Bitwarden to generate and remember it.) Spideroak's competitors in this field are companies that have a "zero-knowledge" architecture (they don't know/can't know what your files are) and therefore can't be compelled to give it away/lose it. They include Sync.com and Tresorit. You can also use Cryptomator to encrypt files before sending them to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
Good stuff
Not so good
Bottom line:
Use something like todo-backup to backup your files if you setup syncs using Spider-oak. Spider-oak syncing is slow as molasses. I signed up for 100 gigs and synced up 'my documents' across 3 computers. I installed a new hard drive on my laptop and restored the sync. Of course it took days to sync up, in fact it's still working on it, I'm used to that slowness already. But over 2 days Spideroak systematically deleted 62036 files and 7150 folders, because the laptop didn't have all the files and folders, it decided that I must have deleted everything.
I went into the recycle bin in Spideroak to look for my files and folders, they were there, but there is no way to sort by date deleted column. At the very least, you should have a way to sort by date deleted to make recovering from these disasters not take a full week of plodding through each and ever folder and subfolder.
Luckily I used another product to backup and it was easy to restore the files. Using spideroak recycle bin would have been a mind-numbingly slow and cumbersome process. The warning about 'exact file structure' when restoring a sync needs to be clarified, why can't it just say 'if you have some folders and files missing on this new pc we are going to delete them from all your other pc's"
This back-up service was good 3 to 5 years ago but has become less reliable in recent years and the company has shifted away from cloud storage services. File uploads sometimes work fine and other times can take days to sync a few MB of data. The offered at one time unlimited storage for $125/yr, which was a good value years ago. Their desktop client software hasn’t been updated since 2019. See \[https://spideroak.com/release-notes/\](https://spideroak.com/release-notes/)
SpiderOak One has been down completely for scheduled maintenance since about 23 April 2024 and is still down as of 4 May 2024.
I just had a look at this service:
I liked the pricing and the end-to-end encryption, but the aforementioned things make it useless for me.
I don't think it's discontinued like the listing says, as my backup is still going, but the development does seem to have slowed to a crawl.
Each month I get a notification that my billing is overdue when it isn't - I know this because they're still charging me - and the iOS app is basically useless. And when I say 'useless', I mean 'doesn't function at all', not just 'severely limited in functionality'.
I also don't like that they charge EU customers VAT without any notification whatsoever, so my $6 per month is actually $7.20 and I didn't realise this until I checked out my billing agreement recently. I get that they're legally required to add tax, but they're also legally required (in my jurisdiction) to show it in the price.
The only reason I'm still with them is that I haven't found a decent encrypted backup service... most of the main competitors are file sync services.
I, like others, wanted to love this software. For a time it was great, and I did feel good about it. Recently there was a problem, it stopped doing backups and continually reported it was "disconnected". I contacted support, and their recommendation was to move app data and sync folders and try to "reinstall" the system. Well, that didn't work either.
The command line utilities might have their uses, but are really poorly, and strangely, made. When you run one under windows, it exits immediately and somehow manages to echo
stdout
back into the console that started it.So basically, there is a blocking problem, and there is no indication from the UI what it is. There are no logs, or troubleshooting/debug commands. Support doesn't have any idea what is going on.
Knowing this, I know for no reason why anyone should trust this software with their data.
SpiderOak is so great !!! Wish the trial lasts longer, anyway i will buy it soon..