So it appears that trading storage won't be possible after next week. As that is pretty much the only reason I have for staying with Wuala I need to find another backup service with similar "pricing".

In fact, I wonder why there isn't an open source version of this. Peer-to-peer technologies seem to be made for this kind of an application...

Another cool feature of sharing disk for getting space: if you leave your computer off, your space decreases (obviously), but your data is not erased, even if your space becomes too small for it, and it's always readable. The only thing that changes is that you cannot add anything until you get back to having some free space left. I don't know how long this can be, but on the site they claim they will never erase your data. So it's not a problem if you switch off your machine for a long time, of course you need to wait an equally long time when you switch it on again, in order to get back to your usual disk space. Of course you can immediately share a bigger portion of your disk instead, and decrease it with time.

As an example, I spent one month away from my desktop, which was left off, and my space went down to about 20 G, with 43G of saved data!

Note that this is a very useful feature but you should not abuse it, as if everyone did so the performance would eventually decrease for all users.. a nice example of "tragedy of commons".

Small correction about the official description for Wuala at this site: The backup and sync features are no longer "limited". They've been made freely available. You can do real backups, or you can sync folders, and it need not be just one special folder (like with Dropbox). You also do not need to sync your sync folders to all devices which have Wuala installed, but you can still access all of your files on those devices from the file manager as if it were a local drive (it just downloads them as you use them, instead of all at once with sync) and/or you can use their Java frontend either from your PC or from their website to access all of your files, whether they are in sync folders or not.

Traded space takes the percentage of online time that you have multiplied by the amount of HD space you set aside. At the time of this writing, you are allowed 100GB per computer, but you can use multiple computers. I'm online about 75% of the time, that is, I run the local Wuala client about that much every day (including all night, of course), and I have 100GB set aside. It's quite simple. So, right now, I really do have about 75GB of cloud storage for free. I give them space to use, and they give me space to use, with impressive features and peace of mind thrown in. Sounds fair to me.

Wonderful, Wonderful piece of software!
I used it to sync all my files across 3 computers, trade my local storage. Now I have over 40GB of cloud storage for free!

I used to use 5GB free Microsoft Live Mesh for more than 2 years, until they decided to switch it to LiveSync with even lower storage space, and I'm so fed-up with this. Now that I'm with Wuala - no regret, no turning back! Kudos to Wuala!

Looks like solid technology behind this product. They have tech talks at google explaining the Peer 2 Peer back ends of it, etc. I was bout to try it but it has one detractor: It is truly storage in the cloud. I like having a local copy of some of my data synchronized also. Dropbox does this, storing on each client computer. Wuala looks to be more for pure cloud storage and takes big advantage if you have disk space to share with the wuala community and you are online alot.

The biggest advantage of Wuala is that your data is actually stored redundant, distributed in the cloud as encrypted data blocks, so that even the Wuala team cannot know what you've stored. In average, each file is available at least 5 times in the cloud, which means there are 5 copies of it, distributed over the network. Hence, download speeds are incredibly fast when retrieving your files from the network. To download from the network, you don't even have to have Wuala installed. You can simply create a so-called secret link and access your files from any browser.

You can also join or create user groups (private or public) in the Wuala network, invite friends, share files of your choice with friends, etc. All files are encrypted locally before being uploaded to the cloud. And there's of course the mentioned web interface for accessing files that have been shared through a hidden or public link. Wuala can also integrate into your file system as a harddisk, so that you can backup your files at all times.

1GB is free per default. But apart from buying storage, you can also easily get more storage free by sharing disk space on your own machine, thus participating in the cloud (which means that encrypted blocks from other users will be stored on your disk - this is how the network realized the redundancy). So, if you're online a lot, it's easy to get more space. It's also easy to find promo codes on the internet that give you an additional 1-2GB when you signup, depending on the promo code.

...Plus you can get another 500MB free space if you sign in using this referral link: http://www.wuala.com/referral/6NPHHK33GKMG6C4F5BCA

I have several workstations incl. Windows, Mac and Fedora Linux. Now I can easily access my files using one software. True, it has only 1GB but you cat gain more free just sharing a bit of your disk space. Also I can backup data which gives me alternative backup copy. If I need I can share files with my friend on Wuala or using secret or public web-link. Nice feature is groups - I can create my groups where I can collaborate with other Wuala users and jouin other groups.

my machine is 24/7 online and i shared 50gb of my hd. so no i have about 70gb space for no money.

best thing i ever have seen.
oh, i also use dropbox, need a mixture of both for my personal desire.

Wuala has a Java application which is accessible standalone and via the website.

Other ways to get free storage:

1. Add up to 12 friends @ 500 MB per friend for a total of 6 GB additional storage.
2. Share out storage on your computer for Wuala to use. If you were to share 10 GB and your computer was available for 12 out of 24 hours this would get you (10 GB * 50% avail = 5 GB) 5 GB of additional storage.