September 22, 2014

Cloud Storage Overload

Filed under: Main — Tags: , — admin @ 12:01 am

This cloud storage stuff is becoming ridiculous. I understand the value. I use cloud storage. With so many players are into the act now, I actually have more cloud storage options than I know what to do with.

The ridiculousness of the situation dawned on me when I discovered that Amazon gives all of its customers cloud storage.

Oh, joy. I have even more cloud storage.

So what is cloud storage? It’s basically Internet storage, like a network hard drive, but accessible from any computer connected to the Internet (providing that you know the password). Mobile devices can also access cloud storage.

I racked up the total. Presently I have access to online storage from five services: Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and (what I learned last month) Amazon Cloud Drive.

While I don’t use all those services, the total amount of free storage available to me is 93.5GB. That’s more storage than in the first 20 or so computers I owned — combined.

Table 1 lists the storage options I have access to.

Table 1. Cloud Storage
Service Fancy Icon Storage Comments
Dropbox dropbox_icon_small 53.5GB My favorite service. Dropbox keeps increasing its free online storage. I received a big chunk free with a Samsung phone or tablet I purchased.
Apple’s iCloud icloud 5.0GB I never use this service, although it’s one of the first ones I had access to. Thank you, old iPhone.
Google Drive google_drive 15.0GB This service is used a lot, along with Google Docs, but only for one of my publishers.
Microsoft OneDrive onedrive 15.0GB OneDrive (née SkyDrive) works well with Microsoft Office 2013. I actually have files stored there. Now if only the computer could keep track of them.
Amazon Cloud Drive amazon_cloud_drive 5.0GB This one is the latest, which I just discovered thanks to the new Fire phone.

It’s not that I mind all the cloud storage. I just don’t know what to do with it all.

We you get a Cloud storage account, you receive X gigabytes of storage space on the Internet. It’s accessed through a web page, which is handy but cumbersome. More conveniently, your cloud storage can be echoed on your computer’s file system, providing you install the proper synchronization programs. After that, aall the folders and files are duplicated locally.

The advantage of cloud storage is that you can work on a file on any device, or on the Internet. That file is updated on every computer or mobile device that has access to the cloud storage service.

For my personal files, I store items on Dropbox that I want to keep coordinated between my laptop and desktop systems. Further, thanks to the Dropbox app, I can access files — such as my grocery shopping list — from my phone.

The work I’ve done with Lynda is coordinated through my Google Drive — and by using Google Docs as the office productivity software.

I have a few files I’ve used on Microsoft’s OneDrive, although they’re mostly for my Word For Dummies book. Still, some documents I use across several computers are shared via OneDrive.

As far as Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive, I don’t use them at all. I know I have some photos synchronized with both accounts (no nude selfies, of course), but because they exist locally (on my PC’s hard drive) as well, I don’t bother visiting their copies on cloud storage.

Ideally you could keep all your stuff on the cloud. Practically, that would require only one source for cloud storage, which means you can ignore the rest. That’s what I try to do.

2 Comments

  1. For my own use the only cloud I use is DropBox I can get at from my phone that all I need. I tried to use Google drive for transferring large files to an end user but was told not to because of “security” the data was not sensitive in the slightest, he has the demanded that the only phones that can be linked to his company email are iPhones, “Android isn’t secure”. Has Google had a security leak ala Apple?

    Comment by glennp — September 22, 2014 @ 3:51 am

  2. They can all have security issues, as it depends on the user and their understanding of the word “password.” I believe the hackers for The Fappening used social engineering to obtain the passwords. Beyond that, I’ve not heard of Google having any exploitable security flaws. Not recently.

    Comment by admin — September 22, 2014 @ 7:46 am

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