Increasingly more and more people are using cloud storage services to share files between each other. E-mail was fine back when hardly anyone had a file that was more that 20 MB in size. But we live in an age when a single high-resolution picture for a camera phone could be 5 MB itself or more. And lets not even get started with those videos of your kids playing in the sprinkler during summer or that report for work/school you have to share with people who aren't on Google/Facebook/Hotmail/etc. And corporate networks are the worse. You can't send them anything. So what do you do? Why cloud storage of course.
What Is Cloud Storage
Direct from the Wikipedia Page,
Cloud storage is a model of networked online storage where data is stored on virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers; and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them and use it for their storage needs. The data center operators, in the background, virtualize the resources according to the requirements of the customer and expose them as storage pools, which the customers can themselves use to store files or data objects. Physically, the resource may span across multiple servers.
Fancy huh? Long and short is companies on the Internet have huge amounts of storage that they setup and make available for people to use to share files. Most services give you anywhere from 1 GB to 5 GB free with some limitations. After that you can pay for additional storage and features (i.e. group sharing, ssl, encryption). Great concept right?
Do You Own Your Cloud Data?
Have you heard of MegaUpload? Brief history is MegaUpload "was" a cloud storage service in the strictest definition of the term. People would upload files to it and MegaUpload would give you a URL where the files could be download from on their servers. This URL could be given to anyone you knew online so they could get access to those files. So issues like e-mail caps were no longer an issue. Awesome. Problem is some people thought it would be great to upload copyrighted material like blockbuster movies, bestseller books, new music releases and such. This is a bad thing.
But the law has a provision that if a service is notified of copyrighted material being hosted on their servers they have time to take the offending material down before they get in trouble. So as long as they don't know about said files everything is fine. Well kind of fine. The problem MegaUpload and a number of similar services presented was they knew not only that people were uploading copyrighted material but they encouraged it. Even to the point where they tried to index it so they could make ad revenue off of the users who used the service to search it out and download it. Doing this gives agencies like the FBI reason to break down your doors and take you to jail. No Bueno.
It should always be kept in the back of your mind that all cloud servers should be used as a secondary backup solution. Never put something up in the cloud that if the service went away tomorrow you couldn't get from somewhere else. Be it another cloud storage service, local backup, etc. Most services have provision to protect your data but everyone is one fire, earthquake, intrusion, or asteroid away from loosing your data forever. So duplicate, triplicate, etc. whenever possible.
So Why Should I Trust Cloud Storage?
Simply put, not all cloud storage services are like MegaUpload. Not even most. There are legitimate reasons to use them. If you broke down the usage of even MegaUpload you would probably find that there were a large number if not even a majority of people storing non copyrighted material on the service for legal purposes. It's sad that one company can give an entire industry a black eye but that is what happens some times.
Who Should You Trust?
As I stated earlier you should trust no one. But as long as you protect yourself and don't falsely believe that any of these services are going to be around for 100 years they are to say the least useful. I created a poll on Go Poll Go with names of some of the service I've heard good things about or trust (Online poll from GoPollGo) .
Google Storage
Google Storage isn't a services as much as an add-on. Starting at $5 a year you can get an additional 20 GB of storage to use across all of your Google services. That means Gmail, Picasaweb, Docs, Sites, etc. The bonus is with Google Docs you can now upload any file and store in your Google Docs folder. Be it a video, an application, a document or a picture. Just don't convert it to Google Docs format and it will be unchanged. After upload you can share it to anyone you want on or off Google.
Dropbox
The current leader at least in mind-share for cloud storage. You get 2 GB of storage free and can sync files with your Mac, Windows box, Linux workstation, iPad, iPhone, and Android phone or tablet. Hell I think you can sync it with your alarm clock. Additional storage does get a little pricey. $99 for 50 GB a year. That hits pockets hard. But to say this is the most useful of all the cloud storage services would be to say breathing is important to living. A gross understatement.
Box.net
This is going to sound cruel but Box.net can be considered a Dropbox clone. They do pretty much the same thing. The positive is Box.net gives your 5 GB free instead of 2 GB like Dropbox. After that it becomes more expensive in the log run for additional storage. And the free account doesn't have the secure sharing features like Dropbox. Also, while it is widely adopted it doesn't have the traction like again Dropbox. Box.net's enterprise solutions are way more fleshed out that Dropbox so if that appeals to you that might give it the edge.
Minus.com
Minus is a little of the sketchy side because of how similar it is to MegaUpload and its competitors. Compared to Dropbox and Box.net it could be looked as the "Wild Wild West". But it is fast and easy to use and one of my go to utilities. Best of all it is free and give you 10 GB of storage with an additional 1 GB every time you refer someone to sign up. Plus they're mobile apps to upload and download your files.
PogoPlug
One of these things is not like the other? That would be PogoPlug. PogoPlug is a device you plug into your home network with USB attached storage. This makes the storage available to you anywhere on the Internet. Great concept since you could put anything from a 5 GB thumb drive to a 2 TB external USB hard drive on it and same anything anywhere. The thing to keep in mind however is your speed is that of your home network. So if you want to download a bunch of data from home to work that will count against your home ISP data cap (150 GB to 250 GB in most cases). Also, if you have slow Internet speeds at home that is how fast you will be able to retrieve your data. Bummer.
Hope this info helped.
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