Cloud Storage

One of the things that I have had a basic understanding of and appreciation for is cloud computing. A lot of people find the concept complicated and worrisome, but really, it is very simple. You are saving your files on a computer (server) provided by a company over the internet instead of on the computer (or smartphone or tablet) in front of you (known as your local machine).

Which company or website is best for me?

How about all of them! It doesn’t hurt to have multiple copies and for some people it helps to keep different kinds of documents (photos, music, etc.) on different accounts.

Google Drive – gives you 15GB but Google docs, sheets, maps, etc don’t count toward that total

Flickr – 1TB of pictures

Dropbox – depends but you can get up to 16GB free

SkyDrive – depends but generally 7-25GB, if you have Office 365 those items don’t count toward your total

Amazon Cloud Drive – depends 5GB but Prime members get unlimited photo uploading

Spider Oak – this only gives you 2GB but it has the best security / encryption (for sensitive or highly valuable / personal data)

Box – 10GB but limits each file size to 250MB

Almost all of these allow you to share your files with family, friends, coworkers, etc. It also helps you access files wherever you are.

To learn how to use Dropbox, Google Drive, and Sky Drive there are some great instructional videos by Jessica Riggins of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium:  http://tblc.org/events/tech-grind-fueling-your-inner-geek-cloudcomputingandstorage

To learn more about maximizing your free cloud storage: www.lifehacker.com/how-to-maximize-your-free-storage-space-on-every-cloud-1690775421