Friday, January 28, 2011

Online Storage: Where Does All My Stuff Go?

Online storage is one of the three vital components of cloud-based computing (the other two being ubiquitous or near-ubiquitous connectivity, and web-based applications). As part of my move to the cloud, I’ve looked into several online storage options.

First on my list are free online storage resources.  Microsoft’s LiveOffice is an obvious choice for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  It comes with 500 MB, which doesn’t sound like much to those of us who’ve grown used to massive local hard drives and network shares, but it’s enough storage for around one thousand typical word documents.

In addition to the 500 MB you get for OfficeLive, Windows Live also includes Skydrive, with a generous 25 GB of free storage for any type of file.

Google Docs provides 1 GB of free storage, with a twist.  So long as you convert your files to Google’s format, they don’t count against your storage allotment.  When you send those files via e-mail, you have the option to send them in Google docs, OpenOffice or Micrsoft Office formats, so there really isn’t a downside to converting them.  Theoretically, Google gives you unlimited storage for office-type documents.

Box.Net is another option, and has a Chrome app available in the Chrome store. Free storage is limited to 2GB.

Photos took a giant slice of my storage usage. They were of the bigger challenges I faced when giving up local storage for cloud life. I started with a little housekeeping- taking stock of all the photos I’d kept for so long just because I could.  I decided only especially meaningful or extraordinary shots made the cut. Anything else was deleted. It was hard, but worth it. Not only was I able to find adequate online storage, searching through my photos is now much easier.

Picasa was a natural for image hosting. Single sign-on to the Googleverse makes it easy to use. Storage, however is limted to 1GB. Yes, I could have created multiple accounts, but that would negate the single sign-on factor.

Flickr is another service I use for photos. Flickr doesn’t have a set storage limit, but instead limits your bandwidth to 300 MB of uploads per month.  

Other places to store (and edit) images are Photoshop.Com, with 2 GB free storage, Aviary, and for those shots of your breakfast- twitpic.

UbuntuOne provides 2GB of free storage and comes integrated with recent installations of the Ubuntu OS.  Additional storage is availble at a rate of around $3.00 per month for each additional 20 GB.

The grand-daddy of free online storage has to be Adrive. They provide a whopping 50 GB free online storage, with paid options for as much as 1TB of storage.

There are other free online storage solutions, but I’ve excluded those like Wuala or DropBox, because they use a locally-installed client, and my aim is to stick to cloud-based applications.  Also, there are a lot more options if you’re willing to pay for online storage, but I’ve listed more than 80GB of free online storage. While that’s a fraction of what I’d get with a typical laptop hard drive these days, one of the real benefits of limiting my storage space is developing the discipline to prioritize and learn to live with what I truly need, instead of what I’ve been sold for so long.

If you have other suggestions for online storage solutions, I’d love to hear from you!

No comments:

Post a Comment