Amazon Slashes Storages Prices for S3
Last Updated on Tuesday, 7 February 2012 09:31 Written by Alan Tuesday, 7 February 2012 11:00
If you have been looking to get into a cloud storage service then there may be no better time than now. There are many of them out there, like AVG LiveKive, Carbonite, and Mozy, plus many more. Perhaps the best known service is S3 from Amazon. That may be because of the Amazon name, but it may also be because they work and they are priced right. All of the pricing in this market is competitive these days, but Amazon today went one better than their competitors by slashing S3 prices below the already low entry point that they had.
Amazon S3 works like most of it’s competitors, in that they price themselves based on what you will store there. By what, I mean space and not content, because content is your business and Amazon pay no attention to that. The new prices are retroactively effective as of February 1st and ar effective for all regions.
“We are excited to announce that we have reduced the Amazon S3 standard storage prices in all regions. With this price change, all Amazon S3 standard storage customers will see a reduction in their storage costs. For instance, if you store 50 TB of data on average, you’ll see a 12% reduction in costs. If you store 500 TB of data on average, you’ll see a 13.5% reduction in costs. The price reduction applies to all of your standard storage- both existing storage and all new storage you add. Here is a summary of price changes for the US Standard region:”
Old New
First 1TB $0.140 $0.125
Next 49TB $0.125 $0.110
Next 450TB $0.110 $0.095
Next 500TB $0.095 $0.090
Next 4000TB $0.080 $0.080 (no change)
Over 5000TB $0.055 $0.055 (no change)
You can find out more by visiting Amazon S3 on the web.
AVG LiveKive Problem and Fix…ah…Work Around
Last Updated on Friday, 3 February 2012 09:36 Written by Alan Monday, 6 February 2012 07:00
Not long ago I wrote about the setup for using AVG LiveKive to backup your files to the cloud. The setup and user interface were very simple and understandable and I was quite impressed by the service and pricing. At the time of that writing I was backing up my first two computers – a laptop and desktop that both have very large internal hard drives and I was only backing up the “My Documents” folders so I noticed no problems. That changed when I moved on to the HTPC which has a small internal drive that is only for running the Windows 7 operating system and the built-in Windows Media Center app.
That HTPC has two large 1 TB external drives plugged into it that store all of the TV shows, movies, music, and pictures. That’s where the problem surfaced. It seems AVG LiveKive duplicates the data it is backing up to the cloud within a folder on your internal drive. So it is essentially taking the data from my external drives, backing it up to the cloud, and also storing a file within a folder on the internal drive.
The files show up in a folder under c:\users\”name”\appdata\roaming\avg livekive\ts_external_blocks_pandora_sqliite_database. After receiving a message on my HTPC that I was low on drive space I found this file by running a utility called WinDirStat which will quickly scan a drive and find what’s taking up space on it.
I searched for information on this problem and found an old forum posting from March of 2011 where a user asked about it and an AVG rep called it a “known issue” that would be fixed in a future update to the software. He did not specify how far in the future he meant and users are still waiting for that fix. I next tried contacting AVG via a chat window with a support rep. A transcript of that conversation can be read below.
This is a transcript of a chat conversation on 1/26/2012 5:15 PM(UTC).
alan joined the conversation.
AVG Chat:Welcome to AVG.
AVG Chat joined the conversation.
AVG Chat:Hello, how may I help you?
alan:LiveKive is creating a file under User-AppData-Roaming that is growing at the same rate as my upload. It’s eating up all of my hard drive space.
alan:Hello?
AVG Chat:What’s the operating system of your computer?
alan:Windows # Ultimate
AVG Chat:Is it ## or ## bit?
alan:It does it on both. I have ##-bit on the desktop and ##-bit on the laptop
AVG Chat:The AVG LiveKive might keep some files locally to make the file operation faster. Sometimes it might temporarily get bigger if larger file is being uploaded. Whenever AVG LiveKive notices that significant disk space can be saved by cleaning the database file, it will do so. Typically this doesn’t happen very often. You can also trigger in manually at the command line if you wish with the “–vacuum” option: Windows Vista/# x##: #. Completely close AVG LiveKive, and be sure that all AVG Live Kive processes have closed correctly. #. Click Start then go to the search box. #. Type in “cmd” on the search box and click on the command prompt icon. #. On the command prompt, type in “C:\Program files\AVG LiveKive\avglivekive.exe” –vacuum #. Press enter to execute the command. Windows Vista/# x##: #. Completely close AVG LiveKive, and be sure that all AVG Live Kive processes have closed correctly. #. Click Start then go to the search box. #. Type in “cmd” on the search box and click on the command prompt icon. #. On the command prompt, type in “C:\Program files (x##)\AVG LiveKive\avglivekive.exe” –vacuum #. Press enter to execute the command.
alan:It got down to # free space on my HTPC. Is there a fix for this?
AVG Chat:Just follow this steps: Windows Vista/# x##: #. Completely close AVG LiveKive, and be sure that all AVG Live Kive processes have closed correctly. #. Click Start then go to the search box. #. Type in “cmd” on the search box and click on the command prompt icon. #. On the command prompt, type in “C:\Program files\AVG LiveKive\avglivekive.exe” –vacuum #. Press enter to execute the command. Windows Vista/# x##: #. Completely close AVG LiveKive, and be sure that all AVG Live Kive processes have closed correctly. #. Click Start then go to the search box. #. Type in “cmd” on the search box and click on the command prompt icon. #. On the command prompt, type in “C:\Program files (x##)\AVG LiveKive\avglivekive.exe” –vacuum #. Press enter to execute the command.
alan:I will have to keep doing this. There should be a fix for the app to prevent this from happening.
alan:According to your forums you promised a fix in March ####
AVG Chat:Currently that’s the fix we can give.
alan:OK…Hopefully the app itself can be fixed to prevent this in the future, Thanks
AVG Chat:Thanks for the feedback.
I later had two phone conversations with AVG reps, both of whom were located in the Phillipines, but spoke perfect English and were as helpful as they could be, but their hand swere tied by the fact that no fix is actually available. Both reps emailed me the same instructions, which I have posted below.
Thank you for your call.
The AVG LiveKive might keep some files locally to make the file operation faster. Sometimes it might temporarily get bigger if larger file is being uploaded.
Whenever AVG LiveKive notices that significant disk space can be saved by cleaning the database file, it will do so. Typically this doesn’t happen very often. You can also trigger in manually at the command line if you wish with the ”–vacuum” option:
Windows Vista/7 x64:
1. Completely close AVG LiveKive, and be sure that all AVG Live Kive processes have closed correctly.
2. Click Start then go to the search box.
3. Type in “cmd” on the search box and click on the command prompt icon.
4. On the command prompt, type in “C:\Program files (x86)\AVG LiveKive\avglivekive.exe” –vacuum
5. Press enter to execute the command.
Should you need any further assistance, feel free to contact us.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Best regards,
For the record this may work for some users, but it did not for me, and I tried several times. After more online searching I found another post, also on the AVG forums, in which some users offer solutions that do work, but really should not be necessary. Note that early on in this thread another AVG rep chimed in to state that a fix will be coming. That was on December 27, 2011.
Follow the user suggestions in this forum posting and remember that you very well may have to uninstall the LiveKive app and then reinstall it after you have deleted the files that AVG has errantly put on your computer. Perhaps if enough of us complain AVG will finally take notice and fix this ridiculous problem that should never have been a part of the app, and certainly shouldn’t have been neglected for this long.
How To: Set Up a Box Account for Windows and Android Part 1 – Windows
Last Updated on Saturday, 21 January 2012 12:37 Written by Alan Thursday, 26 January 2012 07:00
Box, formerly known as Box.net, has become a premiere storage location on the web. There are many places that users can store their files in the cloud, such as SkyDrive and Dropbox, but everyone seems to settle on one particular service depending on need, usage, and pricing; or simply by sticking with a service because it was the first they heard about.
Box is available for both personal and business use, and it’s surprisingly popular with some very large companies. In fact, Box claims they are being used by 82% of the Fortunes 500 companies, which is a staggering number, especially since Box seems to get less attention in the tech world than other rival services. Like many of today’s cloud file storage services, Box has many mobile options and is very easy to set up.
The easiest way to get started in on your computer. In this case I am using Windows 7 and I will just point my browser to the Box web site. A personal use Box account is free and includes anywhere from 5 GB up to 50 GB of storage and file size limits from 25 MB to 1 GB, as well as access via a mobile app. Once you have signed up for an account and received your confirmation email you can log in and get started.
The main interface is pretty basic. Your files, once you have added some, will be front and center. The right column has options for uploading and sharing, creating folders, inviting people to collaborate on documents, and more.
First we will need to create a folder, so let’s click either the “Create a new folder” option from the right column, seen above, or click the “New” button and choose “New folder”. Notice you can also create a web document , Google Doc, or Google Spreadsheet.
Name your new folder and it will appear on the main files area of your user interface. Now lets add a document to the new folder. Again there two places you can click – the “Upload and share files” link on the right or “Upload” button above the files area. You can then browse to a file anywhere on your PC or network, click to hightlight it, then click “Open” and the file will automatically upload to the Box cloud.
You can now email a link to the file to someone or invite others to work on the document with you. You can right-click the file to get a list of options that includes download it, uploading a newer version, tagging it, deleting it, and more.
The top menu, which by default puts you on “Files” also allows you to add “Contacts”, view your recent “Updates”, handle your “Account”, and, the most important thing in today’s world, get “Apps” – both mobile and others, such as a Google Docs plug-in, Box for Office, Box for iOS, or many more.
Box is one of the most popular and fully-featured cloud programs in the world today. As you can see from the above tutorial it’s very simple to setup and use and it brings the cloud to the average user. Next time we will look at accessing that cloud from an Android device.
