Live Mesh as backup solution

Tue, 19/08/2008 - 5:08pm — jethro

I have written several posts about Live Mesh already. If you won’t know what it is then here is a short explanation of Live Mesh.

We have implemented Live Mesh in our organisation to provide the following solutions:

Synchronisation between staff members of web development files. Currently being used by 1 staff member in China and 2 in Brisbane.
Synchronisation of clients files between my office and theirs. Being used by one client so far.
Synchronisation of files between my PC and my laptop for travelling. Being used for several projects as well as access to other files.
Synchronisation on my PC between my virtual machine and my local machine for software development files. This is better than using mapped network drives because the history tells me what files have been updated or added.

Amanda is currently researching the use of Live Mesh to share pictures between her work PC, her home PC and her friends PC so that they can seamlessly share hi-res photos. She will write about that soon.

However another possibility has crossed my mind and that is of using Live Mesh for simple file backup. I think this has a great potential for most of our smaller clients with one or to pcs and no backup solution, or maybe only a backup hard drive. I will be trialing this with one particular client who also has a remote access need and see how good it works. I note that PST files are excluded however but the remainder of his files should be able to be backed up online.

Here is some recent news about the Live Mesh capabilities and “limits”

Size of all contents in a single Live Folder: 10GB (of course there’s still the 5GB quota which limits how much you can synchronize with the Live Desktop)
Individual file size: 2GB
Items (file or folders) per Live Folder: 100,000
Members per Live Folder: 200
Number of Live Folders per user: 200
Number of devices per user: 100

The countries it is currently enabled for (English locale only) are US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, India and Ireland. So sign up quick!

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Fri, 06/02/2009 - 10:08am — Duncan (not verified)

Hi there, Interesting view of

Hi there,
Interesting view of Livemesh, I was just wondering how secure is it ?

Fri, 06/02/2009 - 10:24am — jethro

Hi Duncan It is as secure as

Hi Duncan
It is as secure as you make it. It is using the windows live ID so for folders only you share with yourself its secured using that framework. You then must rely on the physical security of the machines you synchronise.
For shared folders the security is much lower. Sure the Live ID framework is still controlling the access to the folders, but once data is on someone elses machine it may be copied and sent anywhere - only share information with people you trust, or that doesn't matter if it escapes into the public domain. In my case our staff use this - and they sign non disclosure agreements and a contract with me so its no different from using any other file transfer mechanism - eg email, USB stick etc. However it is more secure than just using email.

Mon, 10/08/2009 - 3:23pm — Anonymous

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