Introduction to BigCloud Archives

In a nutshell, BigCloud lets you create Archives in which you can store any number of files. You can store all your files in one big archive, or create lots of archives with more specific groups of files. There are a few things to consider before you start building your archives:

  1. An archive is associated with a "home folder" on your computer.  You might, for example, associate one archive with your "Pictures" directory and another with your "Documents" directory.  You can choose to automatically import and/or export files from the folder for automated folder backup, cloning or syncing.
  2. An archive is stored locally on your computer, so you have offline access. You can store some archives on an external disk to easily move between computers.
  3. An archive can be backed up as a whole to another disk or an online Cloud.  You might back up large replaceable files like movies and music on cheap disks at home, backup picture archives to a Shared Cloud available to your friends and family, sync office documents and emails to a Private Cloud used only by yourself, and publish your resume or blog archives to a Public Cloud for all to see.
  4. An archive may or may not be encrypted - an encrypted archive requires a passphrase to access any files within it. So you might choose to store sensitive personal information, email, tax documents, business plans, etc. in encrypted archives to keep them as secure as possible. If you forget the passphrase for an archive, there is no way to recover the files within it - if there were, it wouldn't be so secure, would it?

BigCloud gives you "Refresh" command that updates an archive from backup and performs folder auto-import and export, if enabled.  "Backup" uploads all your changes to the backup location, and "Sync" performs a refresh and backup together.

Clouds

If you sign up for a subscription to BigCloud Archives Online, you gain the ability to create and use Clouds to backup your archives, and to access archives in Public or Private Clouds maintained by other BigCloud users. A Cloud has a globally unique name which you assign it, much like domain names are unique on the web, but unlike domain names a Cloud name may contain punctuation, spaces and non-latin characters. Like domain names, Cloud names are not case sensitive, and while punctuation is allowed for legibility, it is ignored when resolving cloud names (so "hello dolly", "HELLO DOLLY" and "HELLO DOLLY!!!!!!!!!!" resolve to the same Cloud).  

You may create up to 99 clouds with your subscription, and each cloud can be used to backup an unlimited number of Archives. A cloud may be Private, Shared or Public, and may be geographically located in a US or European datacenter. A Private Cloud contains archive backups that are visible only to you, the owner, on computers where you have entered a BigCloud Online authorization code obtained from your Amazon account, while Public Clouds are visible to all other registered users of BigCloud.  With Shared and Public clouds you can assign access to specific people using their email address or Amazon ID - all they need is the name of the Cloud to access the archives backed up within it.

When you sign up for BigCloud Archives Online, you can obtain authorization codes for as many computers as you want to share access to the Clouds on your account.

 

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