I am very pleased to announce that today we are launching a brand new product called StableBit CloudDrive as a public BETA.
StableBit CloudDrive aims to be the best way to securely store your data in the cloud on Microsoft Windows.
You can download it here: https://stablebit.com/CloudDrive/Download
What it Does
- StableBit CloudDrive creates a new virtual drive on your PC that stores its data in the cloud.
- You can optionally encrypt your entire cloud drive with a key that only you know for trust no one full drive encryption.
- StableBit CloudDrive learns which data you access most frequently and stores that data in a cache on one of your local drives for quicker access.
You can also use it locally in order to create fully encrypted virtual drives.
For a full set of features you can take a look at: https://stablebit.com/CloudDrive/Features
StableBit CloudDrive is an Actual Drive
StableBit CloudDrive answers the question, how can we best extend the Microsoft Windows operating system to support secure (encrypted) cloud storage?
The answer is, we emulate our own virtual drive in the kernel with full Plug and Play support. Because this emulated drive is not a physical drive, there is actually nothing physically attached to the system, but as far as Microsoft Windows is concerned it looks and acts just like a real physical drive.
Why is this important?
A cloud drive created by StableBit CloudDrive is compatible with almost all of your existing applications and integrates very well with existing Operating System level features. With full drive encryption enabled, it’s also fully secure against any adversaries who might want to get access to your data.
Encryption
StableBit CloudDrive features trust no one full drive encryption, giving you piece of mind that your data is safe from any adversaries.
StableBit CloudDrive’s full drive encryption doesn’t only encrypt your data in the cloud, it also makes sure that any data stored locally in the on-disk cache is encrypted as well.
In fact, StableBit CloudDrive encrypts your data as soon as it’s written to the cloud drive and decrypts it only when it’s read, offering full round trip encryption. This means that at no point is your encrypted data written to disk in an unencrypted form, either locally or in the cloud.
Performance
In order to optimize performance, StableBit CloudDrive features a number of important optimizations, one of which is local caching.
Local Caching
When creating a new cloud drive, you have the option of specifying how much data you would like to be cached locally.
Over time, StableBit CloudDrive will learn which data is accessed most frequently on your cloud drive and it will store that data locally for quicker access.
A Different Type of Cache
If you’ve ever heard of the Operating System’s cache, this is not that. This is a new type of cache that sits between the Operating System’s in-memory cache and the cloud. It was specifically designed in order to optimize accessing data from the cloud. It’s typically much larger than the in-memory cache that the Operating System maintains, and so it’s able to cache far more data.
This means that you need to access the cloud less frequently, giving your drive better performance and a better overall user experience.
The Prefetcher
StableBit CloudDrive also features its own prefetcher on top of the local cache. This prefetcher detects sequential data access and starts pre-downloading data that you are about to read in advance.
This is perfect for playing back media smoothly directly from the cloud (provided that you have sufficient bandwidth).
It’s a BETA
StableBit CloudDrive has been in development for over a year now and it was mostly written entirely from scratch (some code was borrowed from StableBit DrivePool, but mostly everything is brand new). StableBit CloudDrive doesn’t use any 3rd party “disk in a box” solutions, everything was custom written in order to ensure the best possible implementation.
But, keep in mind that this is a 1.0 BETA, and so you will be testing a product that is still in development and there are bound to be issues that you may encounter.
If you do encounter a problem, you can let us know here: https://stablebit.com/Contact
StableBit CloudDrive and the StableBit Scanner
When using StableBit CloudDrive together with the StableBit Scanner you get an additional benefit of having the file system on your cloud drive scanned periodically for damage.
You should ideally use StableBit Scanner 2.5.2.3100 or newer when using it together with StableBit CloudDrive. Older versions of the StableBit Scanner will recognize your cloud drive as a regular disk and will attempt to scan its surface. While there’s nothing technically wrong with that, and it will work, it will cause excessive bandwidth usage and it’s something that is off by default in StableBit Scanner 2.5.2.3100.
Pricing Changes
As of today, we are changing our pricing structure.
Here are the new prices of a personal retail license for new customers:
StableBit CloudDrive Pre-Order
For new customers who are purchasing a personal retail license for StableBit CloudDrive, there is going to be a flat $5 discount for all pre-orders while the initial 1.0 BETA is ongoing.
Existing Customers
Existing customers get $10 off of the retail price of each product.
- Visit: https://stablebit.com/Buy
- Enter your existing Activation ID at the bottom of that page in order to apply your discount.
The StableBit Bundle
New customers can purchase all of our products for $54.95 (which will go up to $59.95 after the initial StableBit CloudDrive BETA is over).
It’s the best deal and of course includes all future updates and gives you the option of purchasing any future products at a discount.
Buy the bundle here: https://stablebit.com/Buy