What is your cloud storage of choice?
Monday, October 8, 2012 at 3:00AM Good question from Simon today. What is your cloud storage of choice? Dropbox; Google Drive; MS SkyDrive; Amazon Cloud Drive; iCloud; something else; a combination? And why? And do you actively use it from your device?
I use Dropbox. It's my preferred choice, probably because it was the first solution for me that worked I have a bog standard 2GB account which has been uplifted (a bit) by tweeting about it. I have registered to use all of the other above solutions but rarely do so. I found Google Drive particularly seemed to affect my PC when it was syncing. I read documents from my Dropbox app fairly regualrly, but on my iPhone, I frankly find editing stuff via Documents to Go a bit of a pain.
I'd be interested to hear what others use, and what their experiences are. Despite (or possibly because of) all the tech experience, I know there are a few "cloud averse" people amongst the LIM faithful.
Reader Comments (11)
Like you, I primarily use Dropbox. It's 100% reliable for me and the shared folder ability has come in handy many times for sharing files. Also just about every Android app under the sun shares to it. I have 6.75 gigs of space mainly due to referrals, but I've never used more than about 800 megs.
I still have my 25 gigs of iCloud storage which is mainly unused except for email and bookmarks. The 25 gigs of free storage that I have with Sky Drive is unused. I have far more free storage than I'll ever use since I used my NAS for all my important stuff that I don't need to share.
I use Dropbox only as a few apps like Safewallet only support syncing through it (well reliably anyway)..
I use maybe a couple of MB of the free 2GB account.
Otherwise I see little point in cloud storage, for me..
Depends.
Dropbox has a large selection of photos so if my hard drive fails I have memories in the cloud. Google for email, pim, rss. Flickr for displaying local scenery photos. iCloud for syncing between apple devices.
Otherwise it's sits on my hard drive.
Dropbox here too. 6.75 Gb thanks to referrals, uploading photos and doing the yearly competition.
I use it mainly for phone photo backup, sharing and for side-loading android apps.
Looking to see what was best I signed up to all the aforementioned cloud options and started with their free packages. Dropbox was simple and straightforward, easy to use but I didn't like the fact of the annual charge to boost the meagre storage amount. I found Google also slowed down my laptop (Mac) so have disconnected it. My go to choice currently is SkyDrive as I've got 25GB free, which is more than enough storage for me currently, and I've found the service adequate though a few more ease of use features would help. Furthermore, as I upgrade laptop and phone later this year I see myself using cloud storage as a central repository and, hopefully, my single version of the truth.
Travelling a lot and not always with laptop it's convenient to have my data at hand (albeit with the need for an intenret connection) to work with on whatever machine is handy.
What I really really wanted was to setup my own cloud service. I've checked around and there are some nice solutions. However, I don't yet need the pain to setup it up as I don't use that much the cloud (I prefer my disk).
I have a Google Drive and Dropbox (like everyone I guess) because they are the most common services and are well integrated in all other services.
But, as my main service I use Box.net. Ever since I discovered it a few years ago I find it great. Besides... what other service offers you 50GB storage for FREE. Yes, just login using your Android device a first time, and boom - 50GB to use. They also have loads of features on their service. They are not behind Dropbox, just not that aware of the public. They have apps for Android and iOS, app for Chrome... and other apps for others goals.
You should try.
My own servers; a Mac Mini running Mountain Lion server, which handles contacts, calendar and various other bits and pieces for the house, and a Linux server running (amongst other things) owncloud, for document synchronisation between machines (including PDFs on the iPad, via iAnnotate).
@Rui Duarte Had a Box.net account for ages and haven't used it much thinking I only had 2GB in there... Just checked after reading your email and it turns I have 50GB!
Cool right? and their services are not bad either. Never failed on me once - the basic free is 5GB which is already OK compared with other services.
The one that missed my expectations is Google Drive. The "monsters" they are, they should have started out of the box with 50GB! and some promo like Box.net.
Dropbox for bits and pieces, but mostly my own NAS. Synology gives some handy Android and iOS apps for consuming content from it over the net.
Cloud storage should be a commodity. You should set up which cloud service you're using on your phone and every app should use that, i.e. there should be a cloud API (similar to WebDAV) built into Android which all apps can use. Same goes for iOS and other devices.
That way you're not having to worry about Moon+Reader syncing only working with Dropbox, Squeezebox Boom only working with MP3Locker, iOS only working with iCloud etc. Moving your data would be like changing phone company, only easier as you can change your 'number' online immediately.
It'll happen eventually but it'll probably take a couple of years at least, and Apple won't join in.
I don't use the cloud for storage other than what's use to sync. I use Dropbox for file transfers and some syncs and iCloud for the other syncs.