14 DAY TRIAL // RapidShare's transformation from a traditional cyberlocker, or a hotbed for piracy, as old media companies would have you believe, into a cloud storage company is almost complete with the release of RapidDrive 1.0.
The app is designed to act like the Dropbox desktop client and keep a folder on your computer, a network drive technically, in sync with files in the cloud.
The app should place squarely in Dropbox territory, but Rapidshare is going to have to come up with a lot more than a Windows-only desktop app if it plans to compete in the very, very crowded cloud storage space.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft all have more comprehensive services, not to mention Box and the many other startups activating in the space. Which means it's going to be hard for RapidShare to gain any new users.
At the same time, existing users get a much more limited service. Free accounts get unlimited storage, but sharing capabilities are limited.
Basically, users will be limited to just 1 GB per day of download traffic, for all of their files, for public sharing. Their own downloads or those of their contacts won't be counted. Paying users will get a 30 GB per day limit.
RapidDrive has been in beta for a few months, but is now considered stable. You can download it from here to take it for a spin.