Saturday 12 October 2013

The High Life

Or, maybe more accurately, the advantages of Cloud Storage.

You've probably heard of Cloud Storage before now. Maybe you didn't have a clue what it was, or why it was important, but you've probably heard of it anyway.

In a nutshell, Cloud Storage is where, rather than you having your files on your laptop, or a memory stick, you have it on an account on the Internet.

Why do this?

Imagine if your computer got damaged, or your memory stick with all your precious work and photos got stolen. You'd have only a very slim chance of recovering your data. Now, what if you put your photos, documents and other important files in the cloud? You wouldn't have any need of a memory stick, because all your files are right there in the Cloud, safe.

Which service should I use?

A quick Google of "cloud storage" will give you any amount of results, between sites offering the service, and news sites discussing it. The best ones to use, which offer the best combination of free storage and sharing functionality, are Google Drive and Dropbox.

Personally I use Drive, because you get more storage for free (15 GigaBytes in Drive vs. 2GB in Dropbox), and it integrates perfectly with Google's other services, such as Google+ and Gmail. It's also far more difficult to overload Google's servers, especially compared to Dropbox.

Another viable alternative is Microsoft's Skydrive. You get 7GB free, although you can pay an annual fee for more. Personally, however, Drive has been the best of these, simply because it's never failed me.

It's up to you, which one you decide to use, but, it's probably for the best if you move your important stuff to the Cloud sooner rather than later.

Links:

Google Drive: drive.google.com
Dropbox: dropbox.com
Microsoft Skydrive: skydrive.live.com

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