We are no longer recommending Digital Lifeboat. It’s far too resource intensive. This article has been removed.
Don has questions about Digital Lifeboat – and wonders how well we test the programs we recommend
We are no longer recommending Digital Lifeboat. It’s far too resource intensive. This article has been removed.
I’ve been using the service – had that same power problem at first, but was able to reset my power settings to my preferred settings.
I’m on a laptop and I use full custom power settings. The DLB optimized settings still show up, but the selected plan is always custom.
Thanks, Cloudeight, for the sincere review! The power settings problem is a bug that we’ve hopefully (*fingers crossed*) worked out in our latest update.
We’re definitely still in beta and still working out the bugs. If you sign up, and find problems with our service, give us a call or check out our support page. We need people to tell us what works and what doesn’t – that’s the only way we can continue to improve and provide a product that just works.
Thanks for the review, Cloudeight! Also, thanks to Don for providing feedback. The power settings problem is a known bug, but should be fixed with our recent update (*fingers crossed!*).
If you’re using our service and find you’re having issues, call us! Or at least visit our support page and send us an email so we can troubleshoot the problem. Users like Don help us improve our product while we’re still (definitely!) in beta.
I have not tried your product yet but was wondering if all aspects of the service remain free for life. Additionally what happens with the data should your company go belly up?
Are measures in place to keep cloud employees from accessing data?
You’d need to ask these questions of the staff of Digital Lifeboat.
I’m sorry for the late reply Robert, we missed this post.
We take data security very seriously, and have put in place a layered defense against unwarranted access to your data (including employees). We’ve had it reviewed by a top security firm (Security Innovation) and feel it is best in class, and if we were to go out of business, all data would be deleted before we closed shop.
However, please note that no data, on any device or server, which is connected to the internet can be said to be 100% safe unless YOU encrypt your data on your device before allowing the device and or the data to be on the internet.
This is not as difficult as it might sound, but it does add a layer of effort to your interaction with your digital files. We are not in the business of recommending any particular tool or application for doing this encryption, however, there are literally dozens if not hundreds of choices including built in ones provided by Microsoft in Win7.
I have been using DLB on 5 of my PC’s for about 3-6 months now (that’s 4Q11-2Q12), depending on the PC.
I think I will disagree with the comment that DLB hogs resources, in fact I’m pretty sure they dial back their resource usage depending on what I am doing at the time, using more if the PC is idle or less when I am engaging the processor. I have a ten year old PC running XP, SP2 and I did not notice any slow down, in fact I praised them for this. While I admit that I did not measure it, I was paying attention for any DLB-induced slowdowns. I do have a pretty fast internet connection (usually ~15mbps, per http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/) and all my PC’s are on the same network. RIght now I think most of the neighborhood is online because I’m running below 5mbps, which is rare. Just a thought: maybe it’s not DLB slowing you down; maybe is it some other bandwidth limitation such as your broadband cable sharing, like is going on in my neighborhood right now.
I too noticed the power setting change but I just changed it back. I assumed it was to stay connected to the backup service. Being connected is desireable, and often I choose to leave the PC powered on when unattended, if there is backup activity. This allows DLB backup to use more resources during idle hours. I agree there should be a choice (I guess there is; just change it back), but I also agree that the default coming off a DLB install should be ‘always on,” as it is. Why do I think this? I look at it this way: I kind of see DLB as being useful for for little old ladies who have a PC but can’t even handle a simple Linux backup program like Clonezilla. I understand that a backup solution for novices will come with some defaults I may not like. It was not big deal for me to change them back. I don’t assume my choice of defaults is what’s best for everyone, especially for a product that is trying to establish itself in a market space I do not fully understand.
Note that I manage a sw developemnt lab for a fortune 100 company and I am extremely comfortable with alpha and beta sw and I have some understanding of use cases, requirements management, config mgmt, and capability maturity models.
While I am not in any way affiliated with DLB, other than as a thankful beta user, I think they have a great product and, given the chance, I would take a seroious look at investing seed capital in their business. That’s not to say that I have not given them some pointed feedback along with some kudos, but that’s what beta is for, and that’s why I’m happy to be a part of this one.
Steve
I said I didn’t measure performance such as with a benchmarking program, but I did find my Task manager notes from my initial note to DLB on performance during backup: “CPU and RAM consumption is at about 10-20% and a steady 37MB, respectively.”
I am presently two hours into my first ‘dead-HDD’ restore (the REAL test of backup sw) and am running between 2-25% CPU and 60MB RAM usage. I have been surfing the whole time and not noticed any diminished performance. I am surfing, not gaming or streaming video. If I was temporarily needing bandwidth like that, then I’d use the option to pause DLB’s backup or restore.
Do NOT use this service. Digital Lifeboat is a fluke. My laptop failed, and I had to reinstall everything, including Digital Lifeboat. Once I did so, it showed my old laptop files on their website, but it gave me no way to retrieve them. It only showed my new install as a “new” laptop. It was the exact same computer, only Digital Lifeboat didn’t think so. I made sure my account was linked to the new laptop, but still nothing. I have lost 13 years of work because I trusted this horrible service.
Why would you trust 13 years worth of data to a beta?
But Have you tried calling them? I’m sure theyd help you out and should be able to do it if your backup completed.
I would assume that data that was very important would be on your computer as well as under your own control on an external hard drive or USB flash drive. If I had irreplaceable files (13 years worth?) I would not ever trust one backup — no matter where it was.
On another note. That article was written quite a while ago and it’s no longer in beta — and we’re no longer recommending it. Do you ever consider looking at the dates on the articles you’re reading — or do you go back and read the Wall Street Journal from a year ago and buy stock they recommended then – and complain to them that their stock pick is junk?
The article you’re commenting on here was from 8/11/2012 and nowhere did we ever recommend that anyone trust irreplaceable files to it — nor would were ever recommend a single-source backup solution.
I have deleted the article.
I thought my files were lost to but did not realize that in the upper left corner facing your computer you have to click on those little computer pics and it opens to your files, you can then click every file you want transferred , I know it works I just did it. Being one of those little old ladies who do not have knowledge if I can figure it out , I believe you can as well. As far as power hogging once your system is backed up and it is working quietly in the back ground it rarely draws that much of my power, only in the beginning did I notice that issue.I whole hardheartedly recommend this service
I stumbled across Digital Lifeboat in BitTorrent’s featured downloads. Has the power bug been fixed yet, and is the beta worth my time?
We have not tested Digital Lifeboat in quite some time so we can’t say if they’ve improved it. So it’s up to you. If you do test it let us know what you think
I have used DGA since it was in it’s beta stage. It took a while to understand how to use it since I am one of those little old ladies with little computer knowledge. I recently had a major computer crash and needed my files transferred to a rental computer. I only wanted half my data transferred but although it has taken a few days to recover DBA was able to recover my files perfectly. I highly recommenced this service to everyone out there. As far as how long it took I think that is common with any reboot or recovery process out there. Thank you Life Boat now I really know I can rest easy knowing you are working for me constantly in the background.
Hello infoave,
We’ve made a lot of progress over the last year with our service. We now have users in over 100 countries and have backed up over 100M files. If you would like to evaluate the service again I’d be happy to give you a free account.
-stevet
CEO Digital Lifeboat
I don’t how and when but some of the DBL files had been copied to my hard disk as c:\Program Files(86)\Digital Lifeboat.
I have not installed the application, but since than every minute I get a Popup asking me to finish the setuo.
I don’t want to do this but I don’t know how to get rid of this Popup.
Can you help?
We did not create DLB, we simply recommended it after testing it. If you have a problem with DLB, your best bet is to contact DLB support.