Allmydata FAQ
Allmydata is an online back-up provider offering simple, fast, reliable and secure back-ups for all of your computer's files.
Allmydata harnesses the power of grid storage technology to securely store your e-mail, photos, music, movies and more. Features include:
- Easy, efficient uploading and backup
- Protect critical data from crashes and viruses
- Easy online storage and sharing
- Remote access to your files
- Free 1GB account. No commitment. Cancel anytime.
When you drag a file to the Allmydata drive it will make an encrypted copy of the data to our servers and redundantly store it. You can then access it from any client that mounts your Allmydata drive. To schedule a backup, use the standard backup software included with your operating system (or your preferred backup software).
Allmydata acts just like any drive and will delete the file from your drive. Note that we will be adding versioning and archiving functions in the future so that you can enable a deletion history if desired.
Verify that Allmydata is running on your computer (look for the little green (beta is blue) lock icon at the bottom of the screen). Right-click on it and launch the backup application. Then, select the files and directories you would like to backup on a daily basis. This will automatically schedule a backup in 24hrs, and you can immediately start one by pressing the 'Backup Now' button. You can also edit the schedule to choose the time of day the automatic backup occurs.
Verify that Allmydata is running on your computer (look for the little green (beta is blue) lock icon at the bottom of the screen). Right-click on it and launch the backup/restore application. Follow the steps for file restoration.
Verify that Allmydata is running on your computer (look for the little green (beta is blue) lock icon at the bottom of the screen). Open the Allmydata drive. Select the file or folder you wish to delete. Either press the delete icon in the toolbar or press the Delete key on your computer.
Note that we currently do not limit the size of a paid account. To see how much space you are using, login to the website and go to your account page where it will be displayed along with other information about your account.
Go to www.allmydata.com and login with your username and password. Then go to the My Account screen and change your password. Note that as of version 3.0, you no longer have to re-enter your password on your native clients as well.
All accounts require usernames and passwords before they can be accessed. Our native client encrypts all data before transferring it to our servers, and our web client uses secure http to transfer files.
Allmydata seeks to provide you with the most secure and reliable backup solution available at this time and we plan on making our service even more secure with each new revision. Before going into details we should start by breaking this up into two questions:
- How do I know my files can't be seen by other people?
Files stored in the Allmydata protection mesh are protected in two ways: we use strong encryption with a unique encryption key for each file stored in the network and then we break each encrypted file up into many small indistinguishable chunks before sending them out for storage.
Unlike other backup systems that only use a single key or passphrase to secure your backup data, in the Allmydata network each file gets its own unique, unguessable key. This makes it impossible for someone who does not have access to your computer to guess your passphrase and then get access to your backup files. No un-encrypted data ever leaves your PC. This implies that your files are more secure in the Allmydata network than they are on your local PC.
To further protect your data we take each encrypted file that is being backed up and chop it up into many smaller, indistinguishable pieces. The only way to recover a file is to know which collection of file fragments, out of the millions of similar fragments, need to be collected to reconstruct the encrypted version of your file. Even if an attacker knew which set of needles needed to be plucked out of the massive haystack they have to choose from, this would only give them access to the encrypted version of your file (and they would then have to guess the unguessable key to get to the original file data.)
This also means that none of your files are ever stored on any single server in our distributed storage network; they are each spread out in small chunks across all of our servers.
- How do I know that I will be able to get my files back from the network?
We protect the reliability of your data in two different ways, using advanced error-correction codes and data replication. The error-correction mechanism ensures that you can still reconstruct your file if a large percentage of its component fragments go missing, and the data replication is used to limit our reliance on the error-correction system.
Each server in the Allmydata network provides some replication of the file chunks held by other servers in the network adapting its data replication to the availability and reliability of other servers. The Allmydata network adapts to changing network conditions, moving to replicate your data to other servers so that you can always recover your file when you want it.
Allmydata operates a large cluster of servers that serve as the storage nodes within the network.
Your files will remain in your account as long as your account is active. You may delete a file at any time by selecting the file and choosing "Delete". When you close your account, your login will be disabled and all files that remain in your account will be deleted.
Your files can be securely accessed via our web interface from any popular browser. Just login with your normal account and you can upload, download, and manage your files.
Allmydata works on Windows XP, Vista, and 2000 operating systems. We also have a Mac Beta available. Our servers run a combination of Linux and Windows, and we plan to have a production Mac client in the near future.
Installing Allmydata on your system is a simple, two-step process: program file download and account configuration. The first step loads the necessary files into various directories on your computer and the second step configures the program for your specific use. Save the file to your desktop, double-click on the Allmydata Setup program icon to launch the installation wizard. Follow the instructions during the installation process. Choose to launch the program when installation is complete and the Step-by-Step installation wizard will appear and guide you through the process of configuring the software.
To uninstall Allmydata, click on Start, scroll over to Settings and select Control Panel from the drop-down menu. Double-click on the Add/Remove Programs icon and scroll down until you see Allmydata. Click 'Remove'.
Most problems encountered during the installation of Allmydata are due to a system has insufficient permissions to install new software. In some cases, corporate IT staff will limit the types of programs that users can install themselves. To operate properly, Allmydata must install a number of files into the Windows directory. However, if the user has not been granted permission to install files into that directory, the installation process may terminate prematurely. Please contact your network administrator in order to resolve any permissions problems.
You currently can install Allmydata on multiple computers under a single account. Note that you will be charged per computer.
Backing up your entire hard drive over the Internet isn't practical as many of the operating system and application files are system specific. Users typically back-up their personal files found My Documents – either backing up all of My Documents or only certain sub-folders such as My Music and My Pictures.
Yes. Allmydata transfers data from your computer to your Allmydata account over the Internet, your connection must be live and your computer must be on for the transfer to be successful.
The product does not require an inbound tcp port in order to function; it will fall back to using an outbound connection to reach our servers, and proxy all inbound communication through them.
Occasionally you will need to open up ports for particular firewalls. For the SMB service, you may need to open up ports 139 and 445.
Currently the product expects to be able to connect out on arbitrary ports to arbitrary remote ips, in order to connect to other peers in the network (this is the common case, e.g. with NAT firewalls).
A minimum requirement for the product to function would, at this time, be the ability to make outbound connections to ports 8001-8005, and ports 8801-8810.
Open the backup/restore application and it will show you the current status and past reports.
Allmydata is designed to avoid placing a hard limit on the maximum file size that our servers can store. That being said, there are other limitations that come into play, and our current limits for the 3.0 release are 8GB per file. We will be looking to increase this in the next release to about 8TB.
There is no limit to the amount of files.
Choose Programs from the Start menu, scroll down to the Allmydata program. Drag and drop the icon on to your desktop. The icon will be restored.
