Your Own Personal Hard Drive in the Cloud

As the world of technology is the new way of exchanging data over the internet, it seems that business online storage has taken off.  There are numerous services now that offer free storage space online.  And they offer paid plans for you to gain even more storage space.  If you haven’t yet taken advantage of such “cloud storage,” it’s time to take a look.  Even if you don’t consider yourself to be very computer tech-savvy or have very big computer data storage needs, cloud storage can still be a good asset.

Backup

Only 10 percent of people surveyed back up their computer data daily, according to a Harris Interactive 2013 poll.  Only 36 percent of respondents backup at least monthly, and 13 percent have never backed up their computer data at all.  The reasons why people don’t back up their data vary.  Either they don’t know how to back up their data, or they think it’s too much trouble, or they don’t believe their data is important enough to need backing up, or they simply never give it a thought.  Sadly, it often takes a serious data loss before people start taking the need for backups seriously.  With a cloud storage drive, backing up data can become painless and automatic.  Most cloud storage services will continuously update the files on the cloud to match what is kept on the computer.  As long as there is an active Internet connection, the service will handle the uploading of your data.  This means you don’t risk losing all of your pictures, videos, financial records, or any other important files in a sudden computer crash.

“Cloud Storage”.  Storage huts by Fozzman, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sharing

Most people use their computer to store and share important photos, and video sharing is also becoming more prevalent as smart phones and tablets make video recording very easy.  Videos and high-quality photos are large files, and that fact makes it difficult to send them by email.  Having cloud storage simplifies the process of sharing photos and videos with family and friends.  Services can handle this differently, but often they will have one section which is available for public viewing, while keeping the rest of your files private, or else you can have the service give specific people permission to view a file or folder by emailing them a link to it.  When you don’t have to send big files to share your photos and video with friends and family, you may find yourself shooting film and sharing even more of your life with the people who are important to you.

Access

If you store all of your files on a computer in your home, you can only open those files when you are at home.  In order to have access to files on the go, people use USB drives or portable hard drives.  Other people send the files to themselves by email so that they can extract those files from email at a later time.  But these methods only work if you remember to copy or email the files you need first.  If you forget to copy one or more files, you are out of luck when you need them later.  Also, portable drives are easily lost or stolen, which means you also lose all of the data stored on them.  Cloud storage fixes these problems by giving you access to your files from any computer, anywhere in the world.  As long as you have an Internet connection, you can log in to the service and access your entire library.

hongmyeon / Pixabay

Work Anywhere

Since files on your cloud storage are automatically updated when they change, you don’t need to keep track of different versions when you work away from your main computer.  If you’re at the office, a friend’s house, or sitting in a coffee shop with your laptop, just open your files and get to work.  When you get back home and open up the files on your main computer, all of your changes will already be synced and waiting for you to get back to work.  Whether you’re creating a new presentation for work, or writing your first novel, you can work anywhere and always be completely up to date.

Mobile Access

Many people already use smart phones or tablets, and more are jumping on the mobile bandwagon all the time.  Instead of carrying a laptop to have important files available, a cloud storage service enables you to view or edit your files from your mobile device.  Just download the service’s app and set up your log in details.  As soon as you open the app, all of your files are right there waiting for you.

Even if you primarily use your computer for social contacts or home bookkeeping, you probably have more data than you think.  Being able to access your files from anywhere gives you much more flexibility over where you can work, and what you can share, while making sure your important data is stored and ready whenever you need it.