Remote File Transfer

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find businesses using file sharing over LAN to deliver various reports and important documents quickly and easily. However, this method of sharing files has its drawbacks. Virus infections can spread quickly into the local network and make all the files unusable. Files also do not have duplicate copies in case the device that holds the file fails. To reduce the risk of possible data loss, you might be interested in a service that stores your files securely online.

Online file storage service allows secure sharing and easy accessibility of files. Once you have uploaded your files, authorized users can access them as long as they have Internet connection. You also don't need to worry about losing your files because the remote servers mirror your data to another set of disks. Your data is also protected during transfer because all exchanges are encrypted with SSL. Files can be transferred using a simple FTP client or its web based file management system. These features make online storage a simple solution to deploy.

SmartFile is a reliable online storage provider that offers secure file sharing. Try it out now by signing up for our 14-day free trial and check out the features.

Online data storage is a service that eliminates the need for traditional ways of storing data. People no longer have to depend on the outdated data storage capabilities of computers, disks, storage facilities and even USB thumb drives. Today, you can easily manage files, make secure file transfers and send big files through this web-based service.

SmartFile goes beyond data handling and remote access. It empowers its users with great features which makes online file management a lot easier. Its powerful features allow it to move ahead of the competition.

Today, you can share this technology with your clients by becoming one of our resellers. Our reseller program allows your business to leverage our innovative data management solutions. With this kind of partnership, you are able to get a very profitable alternative source for revenue.

Signing up and setting up your business for our reseller program is easy. Your business' applications will be seamlessly integrated with our system so you don't have to worry about installing anything. Aside from full integration, you will also be given multi-level branding feature where you can use your own designs and logos for your accounts and have your clients use their own set of designs and logos for their accounts.

Innovation should be shared with everyone. Be a reseller today and let everyone experience a Smart way of managing files online. Sign up for our free 14 day trial so you can experience our service's full features for free.

Most accounting firms prefer storing financial documents in electronic copies instead of ledgers because they don't take up physical space and are easier to implement. However, virus infections, hackers, unexpected system break downs and computer failures are some of the risks that can cause document losses. You might want to consider getting a remote storage solution to store your files securely.

Common methods of storing files like flash drives and disks can cause clutter in your office. Flash drives are also prone to virus infections especially if they are plugged to different computers. Discs cannot be used to store files for a long time because the dye in the disc fades after a while or if exposed to UV rays. These storage methods also do not have security features to prevent unauthorized access. If you are looking for a good alternative, consider online media storage. This service lets you do a remote file transfer through a secure SSL encrypted connection. With different user permission levels, files and folders can only be accessed by authorized personnel.

If you are thinking of implementing this secure storage solution, consider getting SmartFile as your partner. We have different storage plans to cater to your needs. You can sign up today for our 14-day free trial to experience the benefits of online storage solutions.

If you work a lot with audio recordings, you probably know that a perfect take can be difficult to re-record. What would you do if after a good recording or while editing a song, the power goes out and your UPS wasn't able to keep your computer on? Or if suddenly your computer crashes in the middle of your job? Wouldn't it be nice if you had a secure storage medium where you can store important files and not worry about losing them?

If you are looking for a reliable storage medium, you might want to consider online media storage. What makes it different from other storage solutions is that you can do a remote file transfer using an FTP client or web file manager. Your data is transferred using SSL encrypted channels and stored in a remote server with a redundant storage system. It also lets you retrieve files anywhere there is Internet. If you need to go out of town, you can download your files and work on them. You don't have to worry about losing your files during accidents like spilling liquids on your computer or a virus infection.

You should check out SmartFile storage solutions to help you improve how you back up your recordings. We offer affordable storage plans that caters to your needs. Sign for our free 14-day trial today.

Video post production processing passes through several stages of editing before coming up with the final video for presentation. Different departments cut the scenes, add captions, titles, transitions, effects and other necessary finishing touches. This may seem like a lot of work but things can be easier and everyone involved can work more efficiently if the video files are accessible in a central storage medium where every department can access the files and make changes immediately if needed.

If you are looking for a central storage system, you might want to consider an online file storage service. This lets you to share files with other departments for editing without burning unfinished videos to a disc and sending them to another department. With this service, other employees can do a remote file transfer and download the other files directly to their computers. This makes editing faster and your work flow more efficient. Another advantage of this service is you do not need additional hardware to enjoy the benefits. You have a virtual storage space that is accessible from any computer using your login credentials.

If you are interested in online storage solutions, SmartFile can offer you several storage plans to suit your needs. Choose the plan you need and experience the benefits of our service for free for 14 days. Sign up for our free trial today.

With the developments in file management, commercial printing businesses are now able to conveniently send and receive large file formats. Gone are the days when clients had to send their ads in parts because the size limit of their email service restricted them to send one large file. You on the receiving end, won't have to spend an awful lot of time downloading or unzipping files either. If you are still using an email service to send and receive data, it's time for you to try a more convenient and secure way of sharing files.

File Transfer Protocols allow you and your clients to directly share files on an online server. With remote file transfer, you simply click on the files you want to share, upload them in the appropriate folders and both of you can conveniently download the files to your individual computers. You won't have to worry about unauthorized access to your folders as you can specify which folders your clients can access and how long they can access these folders through a user-determined pass code.

Innovation is always a part of any business' success. Let SmartFile help you improve your business processes. Take advantage of our free 14-day trial and find out how easy file sharing can be with our service.

The demand for information on-the-go increases as many businesses change their marketing strategies. Due to the risk of data loss from traditional methods of storing files, many businesses are looking for alternatives to help protect their data.

To prevent data corruption, it would be best to invest in an online file storage service that lets you access files anywhere you are. Data will be stored in a secure remote server and lets you access your data using any computer with a browser or File Transfer Protocol Software. The convenience it offers makes it ideal for businesses with several offices. Users can share data with one another quickly and safely. It is also very easy to incorporate in your customers' current business processes. They just have to sign up, login with their account details and they're ready to exchange their files securely.

Do you want your customers to enjoy the benefits of online file hosting? Be a Backup Private Label reseller and offer storage solutions to your clients with your company branding. This is a great way to offer a product that can help improve your customer's way of sharing files. The benefits it gives makes it a necessity and allows you to easily sell the service. Let your customers experience the convenience SmartFile can offer.

If you are worried about losing data during natural calamities, you should consider backing them up on a remote server. This lets you have a copy of your important business files even if your computers become inoperable due to storms, tornadoes and floods.

Calamities can cause your equipment to fail and lose your important data. This can greatly impact your business' operation. Opting for an online file hosting service lets you upload your important documents and lets you access them from any computer. A web based file manager lets you do several file operations like move, copy, download and upload your documents. It's like accessing your files locally. You also don't have to worry about your data being intercepted by unauthorized personnel because you can do a fast file transfer through a secure channel with SSL. This ensures your data's safety every time you do an exchange.

If you need a online media hosting provider, consider SmartFile. We offer storage solutions at prices you can easily afford. You can also use our API backup module and integrate it with your CRM software. This helps automate the storage process from your CRM directly to your account. Sign up for our free 14-day trial today.

Most hard drives in laptops have free fall sensors to prevent the head from hitting the platter in case the laptop is dropped. But there are times that the mechanism fails to protect the hard drive from damage. This causes a head crash that corrupts data in it which is beyond recovery. To prevent losing files, you should always back up your data.

Since laptops are mobile, they are more prone to drops or shocks. This can cause damage to the hard drive and you may lose data. To prevent this kind of situation, you should opt for an online file storage service. This lets you keep your files in a safe virtual storage medium. The remote servers offer a fail-safe method of preventing your files from corruption or loss. They employ a front end with a dedicated storage farm with RAID configured storage. This means, the storage area is isolated from the communication servers, so any attacks will not affect the storage farm. RAID storage also provides a redundant method of storing files and fast file transfer. So if any of the disks fail, technicians can just hot swap the disk and recreate the array. This service provides you with 100% up-time and reliability.

Enjoy the benefits of reliable storage with SmartFile. Sign up for our free 14-day trial now.

Most online stores do not give you the option to re-download purchased songs. If you have several songs on your computer, it is a good idea to back them up in case something happens to your computer. This way, you wont get into the hassle of losing several dollars of purchased music.

Your computer is probably filled with several hundreds of songs and it would be very frustrating to lose them because of a hard drive crash, operating system problem or a virus infection. Wouldn't it be nice to have a backup that isn't bulky and be able to store all your music and even your documents? If you need a reliable storage solution, sign up for an online media storage account. This is a secure service where you can do a fast file transfer to a remote server and download them when you need it. You do not need to carry bulky devices along with you. If ever your computer crashes, you can get it fixed and download all your music back to your computer.

If you are interested in this service, you might want to consider SmartFile. We provide high quality online storage service at affordable rates. Take advantage of our free 14-day trial now.

Backup storage is a necessity nowadays because many people depend on computers in their everyday tasks. Several documents are stored in computer hard drives and many cannot afford to lose them. With the advancement of technology, it is now possible to have a backup storage without bulky hardware. Online storage allows you to store a file in an online server and retrieve them from any computer.

Online backup is a convenient service that allows you to store files in a virtual storage space and retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection. This reduces the hassle of carrying bulky devices along with you. It also features several safety features like SSL encrypted fast file transfer and access restrictions. You also don't have to worry about your files getting corrupted because the remote server uses redundant storage scheme so if any of the disks fail, there will be a mirror copy.

If you think your customers will greatly benefit from this service, why not start selling storage solutions from SmartFile. The Private Label Program allows you to sell online backup services and brand it under your company's name. This is a great source of alternative revenue for your business. Sign up for our online backup reseller program.

File Transfer Protocol is a protocol service that allows files to be transferred from computers to networks and vice versa. The exchange of files can occur between user accounts, various computers and online software archives. You can access this service using graphical FTP clients where you log in using a username and password or you can access it via your web browser by entering the URL. Most computer operating systems today come with a FTP client. If you are comfortable using a file transfer protocol client, all you need to do is to enter the FTP Server Commands you need.

From your computer, you can transfer files just by entering a set of commands in the command prompt line. Take note that you will enter the commands into the local machine (the computer you are logged on to) to connect to the remote machine. These commands like “abor” (abort file transfer) and “quit” (terminate connection) all correspond to particular actions in the network; FTP is the mediator between the two machines and acts like an interpreter that makes sure certain actions are executed in the remote machine. Basically, the user sends FTP commands to be received by another network to facilitate the transfer of files.

SmartFile can take care of all your file management needs. Take advantage of our free 14-day trial today.

The process for uploading to a file transfer protocol system isn’t complicated. When you already have an existing account with a file transfer protocol website, you are given a URL or address for the remote site.

This would come in a format such as ftp://yourusername.yourdomain.com. If you’ve noticed, the main difference between this address and the typical URLs that you type on the browser’s address bar is that it starts with the acronym FTP instead of HTTP, which stands for hyper text transfer protocol. As you may know, HTTP is used for accessing websites. FTP, however, is used for accessing the files which the website uses to display or manage data on their pages.

When you access the remote site with the provided address, you may be asked to key in your user name and password. Once you’ve entered the required details, you will then be presented with various options. Choose the option which allows you to upload files to the server. You will be asked to browse files in your local drive. Click the drive where your files are stored, select the files you want to upload and hit the transfer button.

SmartFile offers an easy-to-use FTP online storage service. Take advantage of our 14-day free trial today. 

Web-based file management is a great technological innovation. Because of people's ever changing demand for technology, a computer’s built-in file management capabilities is not enough anymore to cater to the needs of your demanding job. Web based file management allows you to handle data with ease. Secure and remote file transfer, secure sharing and the ability to send huge files all at the same time are among its many impressive features.

Web based file management is online storage raised to a whole new different level. Aside from data handing, manipulation, and remote access, it can also serve an individual or an organization a lot of benefits. For example, it can organize your billing tasks by providing an internal billing system which can be set up in seconds.

The SmartFile's Private Label Program allows an organization to have a well integrated system to keep up with your increasing number of clients. When the company’s system is well integrated, even major computer tasks can be handled with ease, saving more time and resources.

If you are looking for an alternative revenue stream, take advantage of our private label program today. Offer your customers more than just what you are offering them today. Have them experience SmartFile's online storage service as another way to give your customers exactly what they're looking for.

File Transfer Protocol has done wonders for website management. With this service, you can remotely access your website and manage it from any computer. This is very convenient, especially if you are always updating and  performing maintenance checks on your website.

As a website manager, there are several tasks that you do routinely and there are those that you only perform when you have to. To save time, you can perform automatic FTP upload by creating batch files which contain specific commands. These commands are the things you would routinely do when manually uploading files to your website.

With the use of a FTP service, you can control what information is displayed on your website. Aside from the convenience of being able to automatically upload files, you can also use this service to send large files to your clients like video presentations.

If you are running an online business, you know that it is important to keep your website running and updated all the time. With an online management service, you always have access to your files even if you are not in the office. Try SmartFile's 14-day online storage trial today and experience how easy it is to manage your business anywhere you are.

Today, it is easy to run your own business even when you are not in your office. With advancements in programs and software, you can now manage and send huge files remotely. You don't need to spend money on expensive servers to this. With SmartFile's online management service, you can conveniently exchange and transfer large files online.

Our online file management service is packed with features other online storage services don't have. You can choose from 3 different packages that offer different storage limits. With these choices, you can be sure to have more than enough space for all your business needs. 

The best thing about having an online storage for files is you don't have to worry about maintenance and unexpected system breakdowns. When your own company experiences a downtime, your files are safe and secure in our servers. This is the basic feature that makes many businesses get an online storage service. Every company relies on data and other information to keep their operations running. Any malfunction in your system may damage or cause you to lose data must be avoided.

Try our 14 day free trial and discover why a lot of businesses have decided to use our service to manage their business processes.

In a previous post, I explained why PASV mode is the preferred method to connect to an FTP server. That is all well and good, but how do you actually USE PASV mode?

The FTP client that ships with Windows does not support PASV mode. Google will tell you that it does, by using the raw command. However, this is not true, you cannot perform PASV connections using the Windows FTP client. It can only do active connections. So if you are behind a firewall that does not allow this, how do you do command line FTP?

Command line FTP is useful for scheduled operations often performed from a script. On Windows, this might be a batch file executed by the Windows Task Scheduler. Well, if you wish to automate a file transfer in this way, you will almost certainly have to download a third party FTP client that supports PASV data channels.

One FTP client that is available for this task is ncFTP. For uploading or downloading a file inside a script, you can use the ncftpget and ncftpput programs respectively.

For example, to download a file from an FTP server using PASV mode, you can use ncftpget with the following options.

ncftpget -F -u <username> -p <password> <site name>.smartfile.com /path/to/remote C:pathtolocal

  We are completely confident that once you try SmartFile you will love it. However, moving your files from one server to another is a major pain. You are essentially moving your files twice. Once to download the files to your local machine. Then again to to upload them to the new FTP server. This can be a huge time commitment and may make it not worth switching FTP servers. That is why SmartFile has introduced the ability to Import Files directly from you existing server. Remote File Transfer will cut your transfer time in half. You can now pull files directly into your account from any http:// or ftp:// address. By using an FTP address with a wildcard (*) you can move the entire contents of your existing service in one easy step.



  You're probably thinking, "Thats a cool feature for someone who only has a few gigs of files, but I have hundreds of gigs to transfer." That much data would take a long time to transfer and you dont want to have to wait days for the transfer to complete. For that much data you would use the SmartFile Concierge Service. We would overnight you a USB hard drive with a return lable to overnight it back. Once you get it just copy your files to the hard drive, slap on the return sticker and send it out. When we receive the drive back your files will immediately be transfered directly to the server. You will be accessing your files in a matter of hours instead of days.   

  With so many simple options migrating over to a new FTP server has never been easier. All of the hang ups with transferring your data SmartFile has already tackled. Click Here to try SmartFile today and have all of your files accessable tomorrow.

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SmartFile provides a backup client for Windows. However, if you have Linux servers, it is just as important to back them up as well. Since SmartFile provides FTP access to your space, this task can be easily accomplished with some tools you likely already have installed.

This article will detail the steps to perform a simple, safe, encrypted backup directly to the SmartFile servers. At the end of the article a script will be provided that you can simply install onto your system to perform nightly backups.

Required Tools

Tar is historically for creating Tape ARchives. Thus backing up to a tape would usually involve using tar. Tar has many features including compression and is great for performing backups of Linux systems. Not only can it write to a tape, but also to a file on disk. Further, it can write the archive to stdout, so it can be fed into another program.

OpenSSL is an open source library and command line application that is capable of performing myriad encryption tasks. It is basically the swiss army knife of encryption for Linux systems. For our purposes, we will use it to encrypt our backup file before sending it to the FTP server. By default openssl will read input from stdin and output to stdout. This is perfect for our purposes.

cURL is a network client that is URL driven. It allows uploading or downloading to or from FTP or HTTP servers. For us, the main feature that cURL provides is that you can stream data directly to a file on an FTP server. Let me explain, while most FTP clients will allow you to upload a file from your file system to an FTP server this requires that the file you wish to send to the FTP server already exist on your disk. What is wanted for our backup is a way to “stream” the backup file directly to the FTP server without touching the local disk. cURL provides this with the -T option. If -T is passed – as the file, then the file data is read from stdin.

Now that we are familiar with the tools, let’s take a look at how we will use them all together. Linux allows multiple commands to be chained together by piping the output (stdout) of one command on to the input (stdin) of another command. The | or pipe character is used for this purpose. Thus at a high level, we will be doing the following.

tar | openssl | curl

Tar will create the backup of our system, openssl will then encrypt that backup and curl will transfer it to the FTP server, all without creating any temporary files that we would otherwise need to be cleaned up later.

All that remains is to determine what parameters each of the above commands needs to be given to get the behavior we want.

Tar – Parameters.

To create an archive, you use the c option. To compress the archive using Bzip2, you use the j option. Since we want to back up the entire system, our tar command thus far is.

tar cj /

By omitting any option to save the archive to disk, tar will by default output it to stdout. This allows us to pass the archive data to the next program in our chain without saving it to disk.

There are certain directories within your Linux system that should not be backed up. Some examples are:

• /proc – The proc file system is provided by the Linux kernel and contains information about running programs.
• /sys – The sys file system is provided by the kernel and contains information about hardware.
• /dev – The dev file system consists of device nodes, which represent Linux device drivers.

Backing up the above directories would be folly, as they are provided by the kernel, and some of them (/dev/zero) are actually infinite in size. So, the second set of parameters we will pass to tar will exclude these file systems.
tar cj / --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys

You may also wish to exclude /mnt, as generally you will have other file systems mounted there. These may be remote file systems that are already being backed up via other means. Of course, /mnt may contain file systems that you wish to back up. Your system configuration will dictate your choice here.

OpenSSL – Parameters.

We want openssl to perform encryption, thus we pass it the enc option. Also, I have opted to use the aes-256 algorithm in cbc mode, so we must pass that as well. Finally, openssl requires a key to perform our encryption. This key will be derived from a passphrase, this derivative procedure will use a salt value, so we also provide that option. We will store the passphrase in a file, so that openssl can retrieve it from that file.

openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -pass file:/etc/backup-key

And we can create the key by doing the following.

echo 'This is my backup key!' > /etc/backup-key
chmod 400 /etc/backup-key

Of course, you are well-advised to use something other than the example key above.

cURL – Parameters.

Now, the final step in our backup procedure is to actually transfer the file to SmartFile. We will do this using cURL and the FTP protocol. cURL is driven by URLs, so we must provide one.

curl ftp://www.smartfile.com/backup/

This tells curl to connect to www.smartfile.com and move into the backup directory. However, if the backup directory does not exist, curl will fail. Thus we will ask curl to create it for us if it does not exist.

curl --ftp-create-dirs ftp://www.smartfile.com/backup/

Now, as I alluded to before, we want curl to upload the data that it receives from it’s stdin. This is achieved by using the -T option like so.

curl --ftp-create-dirs -T - ftp://www.smartfile.com/backup/

If we want to use SSL, there are a couple of other options to provide. I suggest skipping SSL if you are already encrypting the backup file. However, if you want to use SSL, you would use the following parameters.

curl --ftp-create-dirs --ftp-ssl --ftp-ssl-reqd --insecure -T - ftp://www.smartfile.com/backup/

We are almost done, the final bit of information that curl needs is a username and password. We could have provided it as part of the URL, but that would expose our credentials to anyone snooping on the machine while the backup is running. It is safer to place the credentials into a file and instruct curl to retrieve them from the file. cURL is capable of doing this using a .netrc file. You can create the .netrc file like so.

echo machine www.smartfile.com login <username> password <password> > ~/.netrc
chmod 400 ~/.netrc

Of course, replace <username> and <password> with your username and password respectively. Now we instruct cURL to use our new .netrc file.

curl --ftp-create-dirs --ftp-ssl --ftp-ssl-reqd --insecure --netrc -T - ftp://www.smartfile.com/backup/

Putting it all together.

Now that you understand the basic building blocks of our backup to FTP solution. Please allow me provide you with a working script. This script was written and tested on CentOS 5.4. Some of the utilities used are out-of-date, for example, the version of curl available from the CentOS repositories uses some deprecated options, on other distributions, you may need to make modifications to these options. You will need to edit the configuration section of the script if you want to customize the behavior.

To install and use this backup script follow the steps below.

Download the script in the following location and ensure it is executable.
wget http://www.smartfile.com/downloads/smartfile-backup.sh -O /usr/local/bin/smartfile-backup.sh
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/smartfile-backup.sh
Customize the configuration section.
Create your key and .netrc files as directed above.
Finally, schedule it to run with cron. The example below will run at midnight every night.
crontab -e
0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/smartfile-backup.sh
You can also run the script manually to ensure it works properly.

/bin/bash -x /usr/local/bin/smartfile-backup.sh

Restoring from a backup.

To restore the backup, or to retrieve files from the backup you can follow the steps below.

1. Download the backup file.
2. Decrypt the backup file.
3. Use tar to extract what you need.

Download the backup file.

You can either use the SmartFile web interface or FTP to retrieve the file.

Decrypt the backup file.

You can use OpenSSL to decrypt the file. The following command line would do the trick.

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -salt -pass pass:'This is my backup key!' -in full-2010-06-03.tar.bz2 -out full-2010-06-03.tar.bz2.dec

Use tar to extract what you need.

You can either extract the entire archive or a portion of it. Below are commands to perform either task. For more information, read the tar man page..

mkdir /tmp/restore
tar xjf full-2010-06-03.tar.bz2.dec -C /tmp/restore

mkdir /tmp/restore
tar xjf full-2010-06-03.tar.bz2.dec -C /tmp/restore /path/to/file

** Note **
You may receive the following warning during extraction:

bzip2: (stdin): trailing garbage after EOF ignored

This seems harmless, you can get rid of it by either writing the archive to disk before transfer or using gzip instead of bzip2. The archive still decompresses fine, but tar is apparently outputting some additional garbage when using bzip2 and outputting to stdout. I personally still using bzip2 and stdout, as the advantages (greater compression ratio, no temp disk space required) outweigh the disadvantages.