SAN FRANCISCO - Connected Data launched Transporter this week, the company's private data sharing and storage solution. The company first made waves with a Kickstarter effort in late 2012 to beta test Transporter, and the device is now available to the general public.
Transporter essentially offers the kind of shared storage that cloud-based services like Dropbox provide. The difference is that rather than uploading your data to the cloud, data is sent to your personal Transporter device, which then handles syncing between your devices.
Transporter
Photograph by Sphynge Photography for The Mac Observer
This means that users maintain control of their data, and Connected Data has made setting up and using Transporter very easy. Transporter also gives users the ability to decide if folders will be synced across your devices or accessed remotely.
In addition to offering far more storage space than cloud-based solutions—the device is available with up to 2TB of storage—Connected Data is positioning its product as providing more security and more options for shared and synced data.
The device works like this: Your Mac or PC sees the folders on your Transporter the same way it sees folders from cloud-based solutions like Dropbox, directly in the Finder for the Mac. iOS devices can also access that data through an app, and an SDK is available to developers who wish to add direct Transporter support to their apps.
Anything you put on those folders gets copied over to your Transporter and synced out to any other Transporters you're using—say at your home, your office, your business partner's house, etc.—as well as Macs and PCs that have access to it.
That data is encrypted during transmission, and it is not stored on Connected Data's servers. The Transporter devices themselves are doing all of the storage, encrypting, and syncing. The company said that this makes Transporter ideal for attorneys and doctors who are barred by regulations from storing client data in the cloud.
There's also a peer-to-peer element to the way data is synced between Transporters. The more Transporters involved in your Transporter circle, the faster the syncing as each device assists in the process.
You don't have to have a Transporter to access a Transporter folder. Owners can share an individual folder with one or more people, allowing them to access the data in that specific folder.
Transporter is available without a drive (i.e. you can add your own) for US$199. $299 includes a 1TB drive, while $399 includes 2TB. That's a one-time fee—there is no subscription required, and the device will scale up as hard drive capacities improve.
Connected Data is showing at Macworld at booth #541.