14 DAY TRIAL // ZumoDrive may seem like “yet another online storage alternative”, but support for streaming from the cloud makes it slightly different from what you’re already accustomed to. You benefit from 1GB of free space at the beginning, but you can double the bits by completing the Dojo, which actually represents going through the tutorial for using the service.
Storing data in the cloud and synchronize it across multiple computers has become a trend that has been adopted by more and more users lately. ZumoDrive offers you 2GB of free space, if you complete the Dojo, which is the basic storage offered for free my most providers of such services (except for 4shared, which offers 10GB); you can expand the storage limit to up to 5GB by referring the service to your friends (each friend signing up gets you 256MB).
Completing the Dojo is pretty fun since you have to earn your belts by learning a few things about what the serve offers. You’ll learn how to upload files, view them online, synchronize folders across computers through ZumoDrive, share the folders or install the manager on mobile devices (Android, iPhone or Palm Pre) or other computer platforms (Mac or Linux).
The interface of the desktop manager is pretty simple and straightforward. Main application window lets you view the status of ongoing file uploads or downloads or the folders that are currently synchronized across multiple machines through ZumoDrive (yes, it comes with multiple folder support).
As soon as you complete the installation of the desktop manager your drive list will be expanded with a virtual one labeled “zumodrive”. This partition gives you complete management over the files stored online, without having to access the web interface. Each modification you make on this drive is automatically reflected in the file and folder structure stored online.
If you have great upload speeds the data can be handled almost as if it were stored locally. Otherwise you will have to wait until all the changes are uploaded to the server. During our tests, although Transfer Status window showed pretty low speed rates from time to time, these are enough for streaming media.
However, such problems will not persist as the service creates a cache area on your computer where all streamed media is downloaded. You can set the partition for the cache from the Settings menu of the application.
One particularity in ZumoDrive is the fact that it provides an easy way to add folders to the cloud by simply right-clicking them from Windows Explorer menu. This way you are not tied up to one folder that is monitored by the desktop manager, but are free to choose any directory, regardless of its location on the system.
The application also sports a function that initiates scanning for media files. It will basically look into the Music folder of the current user’s account and try to detect any media files. During our tests we found this feature to be faulty, as the scan seemed to reach no end and no file would be discovered during our wait. The only way to cut this activity short was in our case restarting the interface.
Configuring the manager is a very simple job. All the options are easy to understand and the tougher ones come with an explanatory note. “Settings” panel lets you know at any time how much free space you have to spend. This is also the place from where you get to assign a letter to the ZumoDrive partition.
You can enable notifications whenever you are streaming a file or when the files are changed. In the case of audio file we received no notification about the data being streamed. But with Images we an alert would pop up informing that the file is being streamed.
Unlike desktop managers of the same feather, ZumoDrive puts you in control of the transfer speed, in case you need the bandwidth for other tasks. The possibilities are to set the values for download and upload manually or to leave it to automatic or you can adjust them by dragging a slider towards the faster or slower end.
In order to stream the files seamlessly the service drops them into a cache location (which by default is on the system drive). If the standard configuration is not suitable for your needs, you can select a different partition. In order to benefit from fast access to commonly used files the application allows you to define the size of the cache folder; the larger it is the more files fit in and the app does not have to delete data in order to make room for new items.
On the downside, there is no option to trigger automatic cache deletion, so the space awarded for this purpose will remain occupied. Under advanced options ZumoDrive lets you decide on the type of data you want to be cached. The file types involved are audio, documents and pictures. There is also an option for all the other files. Having everything set to “never keep local” did not delete the cache data, not even after closing the application altogether; but restarting the computer did the trick.
Defining a synchronization folder is no longer mandatory. Thus you can upload files from a computer through the web interface and access them on a different machine through the virtual partition created by ZumoDrive. You control where the cache folder should be saved and its size. This setting can be modified at any time, as the application will simply move the data to the new location. You can choose to have no file stored on the disk. This article is also available in Spanish: Envía los archivos a la nube con ZumoDrive
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