How do you ensure your files are always available and safe? What if one day your hard disk crashed and you lose all your important data such as photos, musics and documents? So, why not start looking into cloud storage.
I know at times, it is difficult to rely completely on free cloud storage. However, have you really look into what a free cloud storage could offer you compared to the paid ones and what paid cloud storage actually offer you where the free ones don’t? We will get to that later on in this article.
[Read also: 3 Tips to Keep Your Online File Storage Secure]
If you just need a place to store your data and nothing fancy other than that, I believe what the free cloud storage could provide to you is sufficient for now. This article delivers its message completely to the end user that wants to use cloud storage for personal use only and not for business owners.
Here are 5 reasons why you should use free cloud storage
1. You don’t need to store everything
When you know that you are using a free cloud service, you should not expect to store your entire hard drive into the cloud. After all, the reason you need a cloud storage is to keep important information into the cloud such as documents, photos and notes. If you are expecting to store your videos in the cloud, then I guess you can’t escape paying for more cloud storage space.
2. You can always combine several cloud storage providers
Sign up for lots of cloud storage services. Popular ones like Dropbox, Skydrive, Ubuntu One, Google Drive already offer you up to 19GB in total and there are still more counting out there. Once you had signed up for those services, sign up one more which is Jolidrive to manage all your storage in one place. The biggest problem when you have so many cloud service is managing all of them. As a result, you need a tool to manage all your cloud storage in one place. Jolidrive is a free tool but there are several tools out there as well which might charge you a little for a better service. Here is the complete guide from PC World on how to increase the space of free cloud storage.
3. They only offer you more storage
What you usually get by paying for cloud storage is always the amount of storage only. Since you can combine them, why not make use of all the free services first. You will only need hundreds of GB of data when you own a real business and at that time, you should have a certain amount of budget for cloud storage.
4. Not much differences in terms of security
Usually those paid and free ones does not differ a lot when it comes to security. Why is it so? This is because their reputation is at risk if they allowed a poorer security implementation for free service while enhance the security only for those who pay. Let’s put it this way, if their free service is not secured, then why should you go for the premium one? That is why if you think you pay more to get better security, you are not so right after all.
[Read more: Tips for Safely Using the Cloud]
5. Because it is free
What other better reasons that you have to resist a good and free service? None! I personally think this is the ultimate reason why you should go for cloud storage which are free. I myself have been using a couple of them and I find that it is the best way for me to store all my data without having to pay a single cent.
[Image credit: basketman, freedigitalphotos.net]
Yes, i am using cloud storage to backup my important data. Cloud storage are great at the time of data lose. I am using a mix of cloud storage such as dropbox and google drive. Anyway thanks for the worthy post.
That’s great. Hope you have a good time managing multiple cloud storages.
Very good point, thanks for sharing. The problem is yet so many people are to get antiquated with what cloud storage is. I run a networking website which also offers cloud storage, in fact it lets you sync your documents to all your devices as well. we are giving 2 GB free and soon we are upgrading to 5GB free. The challenge is yet there is a huge deal of people who are not sure what cloud storage is. O well sooner or later they will use this, because it might just be a necessity.
I see cloud storage is going to be a trend soon. If your service comes with great features, I’m sure your audience or customer will love it.
Cloud storage is still something of a mystery for many people and you have unraveled that mystery really well via this post of yours. You make some really good points. Cloud storage is the future and soon on-board computer hard drives will be history.
Thank you for your comment there, Helen.
Truly said!
Most cloud services don’t charge. Moreover, cloud storage companies like mediafire offer 50GB free storage and you can get even more by installing their apps, liking them etc.
I would recommend cloud sites to all the users!
One thing I forgot to mention in my previous comment. Cloud Services are a lot synchronized and uniform when it comes to accessing multiple devices. We can easily access files from any of our devices without a hassle when it comes to cloud service.
Exactly. That’s the point of using cloud storage. I can easily access all my data even when I am outside with just a mobile phone.
Cloud storage is the best way to backup your important files and be safe. Thanks for a pretty informationable article on cloud storage, well i also checked out your blog, it also looks pretty nice! good work!
Thanks for checking out 😉
I will ensure the contents that are published will be a high quality one.
Great article Alan! I 100% agree that the average user can just use a free storage method for backup. I just use the free version of Mozy and Google Drive myself and the amount of space is plenty for my critical files. I then just backup all my large files like music/videos/etc to a separate hard drive every so often since these rarely change.
I recently discovered that Amazon S3 is also another great cloud storage. Do check that out as well 😉
I would like to point out that some people made a workaround for how to use the 1 Terabyte storage by Flickr to host wordpress. If everyone can manage to do that, then days of buying hosting = over.
And everyone would party on the cloud!
If I understand correctly, that only applies for Photo storage. I’m not too sure about other type of storages.
Yes, it only applies for photo storage but google it and you can find a work around to even host wordpress on that 1 tb of sweet cloud space! 😀
Cloud storage are getting an essential thing for android smart phone user as both of these are the generator of today’s market so we have to kept that in mind and you have described in a very effective way so 100 marks to writer for this valuable article.
Thanks for this useful article Alan. Cloud Storage have become one of the most effective way of storing your frequently used important documents or any other data online. One can not carry the data everytime on every computer he/she works, Cloud storage provides you this facility easily without taking anything from you (though you need to pay if your data is quite large). I’ve tried Dropbox & sky drive & both worked fine for me. I keep my frequently used data on this storage(Dropbox mostly) so that I can have access of it from any place I want, what I only need is a working internet connection.
I’ve been using dropbox since I’ve known about cloud storage and I am fully satisfied with it. I store my important documents only, so I am not paying anything.
Dropbox is best for me. I’ve got a small business and need to share just some files sometimes… I’ve tried several cloud services like Office Online or Google Docs.
Now I just work with Dropbox and it seems to work most practical comparing to all the other services… No plugins needed, no portals, just drag ‘n drop your files…