JustCloud bills itself as a backup system which permits subscribers to Access Your Files From Anywhere At Anytime, From Any Device.
I subscribed to JustCloud on March 31 and downloaded the JustCloud Client, the program provided to back up files from my PC, and, if the need arose, restore them. The first thing I noticed about JustCloud is that Upsell* emails and popups soon littered my system. This onslaught of buy more, buy more began, mind you, even before my subscription had been successfully activated!
Finally, on APRIL 16TH, sixteen days after I paid for two years membership (I paid via PayPal by eCheck, which delayed processing), I was finally able to begin backing up my system to the cloud, although one email to support was dealt with by sending me this message: Unfortunately I am having trouble locating your account with us. So I can locate your account and assist you further with your issues, can you confirm the email address that is on your account with us, and can you confirm if you have a free trial or paid account please. I sent him a copy of my Welcome to JustCloud email and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that was beginning to form. The response was a surreal, I apologize, but your previous email wasnt quite clear, could you please explain your request in further detail.
JustCloud Support is slow, often unresponsive, and ineffective most of the time. Responses to my issues were most often filled with generic cut and paste answers to questions I didnt ask. Suggestions on how the service might be improved were, to be fair, received politely and, if you can believe them, passed on to those who might act upon them.
Once my files were backed up, I visited my online JustCloud account and used the View My Files link to examine my files.
I immediately noticed that the *. Eml (email) files were sometimes stored in folders with corrupted names, and that the directory tree was not backed up properly. All the email as there, mind you, it just wasnt always where it belonged.
The result, when it came time to restore my email database, was hours and hours of extra work trying to restore a massive directory tree which JustCloud had treated more like a 5000 piece puzzle than a integrated file system.
As bad luck would have it, one of my two RAID1 disks failed on July 8th., and the daunting task of rebuilding my system began. I felt smugly secure in the knowledge that my files were all backed up on JustCloud. As I would soon discover, while that was technically true, it would prove extremely difficult to restore them to my rebuilt system. That process has proven to be a nightmare of stalled software, abysmal support and delay after delay. As I write this, on July 24th, all of my files have still not been restored!
One serious issue: The JustCloud Client will not permit you to restore your files to folders you designate. It will only allow you to detemine where a dated JustCloud folder will appear. At the moment, for instance, my Restore file is [email protected]? And it is receiving files from the Cloud. To restore these files (or not, as the case may be), I have to bring up Windows Exporer, locate the directory where I want to put the files, and move them manually. Easy enough, but wait theres more.
As has often been the case during my JustCloud experience, the Client stalls and I have to force it to close so I can start all over again. If a few files photographs, for instance were restored to that JustCloud folder, but not all of them, it would be great if I could simply restart the client and direct it to use the same folder. JustCloud does not permit you to do that, so you have to start all over again.
If this doesnt seem a problem to you, ask yourself about the condequences if thousands upon thousands of photographs (or music files, or documentsyou get the idea) are involved.
In my case, some photography folders contain nearly a thousand images. If JustCloud restored 900 out of 1,000, for instance, one is left with two choices, both ugly:
1. Start all over again and try to restore all 1,000 images. At an average of 5MB per image, you can imagine the enormous level of wasted bandwith! (Having done this countless times, and still unable to retrieve all of my images, I finally gave up and resigned myself to having lost them.
2. Determine which photographs, exactly, were restored, and individually designate each photograph which has not been restored by using the system the Client provides, which does let you select individual files for restoration.
What does this mean in the real world? It means that you use the Clients Restore feature to tick off ALL of the photos, then UN-tick the 500 that have already been restored, OR tick off each and every one of the 500 that have NOT been restored and try again.
I finally accepted that many of my files were never going to be recovered, cancelled my 2-yr. PayPal subscription and requested a refund - which I have yet to receive.
Dont do business with these people. Unlike folks who feel that JustCloud is a scam*, I simply think theyre completely inept.
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