The file hosting service from Canonical is scheduled to close on July 31

Jul 20, 2014 16:54 GMT  ·  By

Canonical has discontinued its Ubuntu One file service and now the company has sent a final notice for the users who still haven’t retrieved their files.

Canonical decided a while ago that the company would no longer provide a file hosting service for the users of Ubuntu. Even if the file services weren’t stellar and there seemed to be very few users, the news that Ubuntu Files was going away wasn’t received well by the community.

Developers didn’t pull the plug from one day to another. In fact, the announcement was made a few months ago and users had plenty of time to clear their space on the servers. Canonical even made the process a lot simpler by providing a couple ways of moving the files, including a partnership with Mover.io, which is free of any costs (regular Mover.io users need to pay if they move stuff from elsewhere than Ubuntu to another file hosting service.)

“This is the FINAL reminder to make sure you have retrieved all your data from Ubuntu One filesync, as we will be deleting all the content permanently on 31st July 2014. After that date, we will no longer be able to retrieve any of your files.”

“In order to make it easy for you to retrieve all of your content, we have released a new feature that lets you download all your content at once. Our website (https://one.ubuntu.com/) has been updated with instructions on how to conveniently download all your files. In addition, you still can use Mover.io's offer to transfer your data to another cloud provider for free. The Ubuntu One web interface is available for you to download individual files as well,” reads the final warning from Canonical.

Starting August 1, all the files that have been left on the servers will be deleted and they will be virtually unrecoverable. Even with all the advanced warnings and with all the methods provided for file transfer, it’s very likely that there will be users who don’t have a clue about what is happening.

Canonical needs to be ready for the real backlash that will start in August from the people who will most likely lose their files, even though they have been warned months in advance.

The next best thing after Ubuntu Files might be Dropbox, although the client for this file hosting service is not the best one possible and it’s not properly integrated in the existing applications.