Symform Announcement: "we’ve updated our free service"

[jots]

Just got this email. I may look at using Symform again, but I'm worried about the high CPU usage and excessive disk access this service brings to QNAP.

Thank you for using the Symform Cloud Storage Network!

In our ongoing efforts to make it easier for you to take advantage of cost-effective cloud storage and backup, we’ve updated our free service to give you more cloud storage without doing referrals. We’ve also made it easier to understand how much local storage to contribute based on the amount of cloud storage you want to use.

1. Even Easier 200GB Free Offer:
On the free side, as always, you get 10GB of free cloud storage immediately just for downloading the Symform software. No contribution required.
Now you can earn up to 200GB of free cloud storage just by contributing an equal amount of local storage to the network. No referrals needed.
And you can reach 200GB as slowly or quickly as you want. Want to back up 50GB in the Symform cloud? Just contribute 50GB of local storage. Want to back up 21.3GB? Just contribute an equal amount.
2. Easier Contribution Calculation:

We’ve also made it easier to understand how much cloud storage you are consuming, showing you the amount of data stored with redundancy included. No more calculations needed!
As you know, Symform adds redundancy to your data to ensure that it's always there when you are ready to restore it.
Now you will see that redundancy reflected in the amount of data you are storing in the cloud. And you just need to contribute an equal amount of local storage!
3. Deleted Files Don’t Count Against You:

We heard you when you asked to not include deleted files in the cloud storage calculation. So now, we don’t.
As soon as you delete a file, that storage amount is deducted from the amount of storage you are consuming in the Symform cloud.
What if you want to restore that file? Don’t worry – deleted files can still be restored for up to 15 days after you delete them.
Let us know if you have any questions. As always, our awesome support team is ready to help you (support@symform.com).

Thank you!

The Symform Team

[Symform]

Hi Jots,
As you know from our email blast, we've just updated our service offering to make things simpler and easier with Symform. Per our email blast, everyone can get 200GB of cloud storage by contributing 200GB. No more referrals needed!

In terms of CPU, we've done a lot of work to take advantage of the cryptographic engine and security accelerator available on some of the QNAP devices (Please see our blog posting for the full details http://www.symform.com/blog/new-release ... en-source/). This should reduce the CPU load on your device.

The disk access will still be high as Symform is very IO intensive, but now that we don't have 150GB minimum contribution (just contribute what you need) this should lower our "chattiness" a bit. Of course if you need less than 10GB of storage, you technically don't have to contribute anything at all.

[Don]

Nice but I turned the service off as it was constantly (24x7) accessing the disk and there was also constant internet traffic.

[Symform]

Hi Don,
Sorry to hear that Symform will not work out for you. To give some context on Don's comment, please see this posting:
http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=2 ... 39#p260556