Solo Technology

This past week I saw quite a few tech and blog articles getting giddy about the new Windows Live SkyDrive changes –especially about the 5GB of free storage included. Sounds great doesn’t it?

A free 5GB to store stuff is pretty compelling and, as you might expect, SkyDrive also offers sharing and notifications and all sorts of cool socially stuff.

However… have you seen the upload experience? From a non-IE browser, it’s not so swell. I like to use services like this to upload a directory of files for backup or sharing. Here’s what I see when I’m ready to upload from Firefox:

Yikes. That’s a hard way to upload a lot of files! Individually select five at a time?

Side Note: Be aware of that 50 MB per file limit…

I had a look at the SkyDrive uploader page with Internet Explorer 7 and see a glimmer of hope:

Ah ha, an uploader tool that’s IE only (I highlighted the link above). As you might guess, it is an ActiveX control.

I’ve installed the ActiveX control, only to run into the next (minor) “gotcha”. While I now have a spiffy drag’n'drop area on the upload page, I can’t drag a folder onto it:

*sigh* As you can imagine, this makes uploading a set of files with sub-folders a bit problematic. OK, so maybe “problematic” is a polite way of saying pain in the rear.

Fortunately, that’s easily worked-around by compressing the files into a single archive beforehand.For instance, I used 7zip and some light & fast compression to make a quick archive and uploaded that instead.

That same work-around also mitigates the need for the ActiveX control altogether. After all, now I’m only uploading one file… I’ve gone full circle and now I can use a non IE browser again.

Cheesy, but effective. And hey, depending on the compression level, it can help with that 50MB single file caps too.

Anyone else using SkyDrive and have some thoughts to share?

7 Responses to “Live SkyDrive — Multiple File Uploading”

1. Dave on March 1st, 2008 8:27 am
   

   Can’t wait for Gdrive from Google

2. Chris on March 1st, 2008 11:03 am
   

   Dave, I’m beginning to wonder if it’ll ever happen… boy, it’s been a long time a-comin’…

3. Tim on March 9th, 2008 5:02 pm
   

   Can you then unzip the files once you get them to the skydrive? Is ther a way to FTP the files onto the skydrive?

4. Jay on May 12th, 2008 8:24 pm
   

   What I’m hoping is to be able to use SkyDrive to host a web site, that would be great! I tested it by uploading an HTML file and an image file, and it worked. The 2 problems I have now are:
   1. I can’t upload folders and their respective sub-folders (as you already found)
   2. the web address it spits it’s so not human-friendly
   I could probably do with num 2 (maybe by sending only links instead of the actual address), but num 1 is definetely a big problem.
   It would be great to learn of a solution to this.

   Good luck,

5. Marvin on May 22nd, 2008 9:23 am
   

   Give people an inch and they want to take a mile. SO you get a free storage area. Instead of saying thanks, you whinge about it not being a full web hosting service or it doesn’t do this or that. Unbelievable. If you don’t like it, don’t use it and free up the bandwidth for people that find it useful!

6. Chris on May 22nd, 2008 9:29 am
   

   Hi Marvin - you’re a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?

   My only whinge (I wrote the original article you commented on, not the comments below it) was about the multiple file uploading experience. Seems to take what could be a great service and hamstring it down to mediocrity.

   Don’t fear — I’m not using the service nor hoarding your bandwidth.

7. Shuckæes on August 1st, 2008 7:09 am
   

   Marvin, you’re clearly another Microsoft fanboi with nothing of value to say. So here comes MS with a supposed killer online app, except it’s inconvenient to use, and has been done many times before by many other companies. Online storage is nothing new! We would at least expect that they’d make it easier to upload content, and a 50meg size limit on a file is retarded. It’s a free service, but we’re really getting our money’s worth. It’s a lame implementation of a stale idea. Everything that’s free is not necessarily good. No thanks, I’ll pass on it and wait for Gmail to come with something better. Once more, MS drops the ball. They’ve been on the retreat for years, losing every single fight to Google. In five years they’ll be relegated to little league.

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