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Cloud Storage has become an inevitable term in Computing lately. With ever increasing demand of data storage each day, Cloud Storage is likely to be the safest way to store and backup your data.

Best Free Cloud Storage 

DropBox

 

• Dropbox is one of the most popular Free Cloud Storage providers which is available for both desktop top as well as web platforms
• Dropbox provides 2 GB of free space. Premium Plans start from 10$ per 100 GB space.
• Flexible file sync on the Dropbox servers. It doesn’t sync well with files present on the client servers
•  Dropbox is available on all popular OS platforms like Windows, Mac, iOS and Android   

Google Drive

• Google Drive is a relatively new Free Cloud Storage provide which made it’s debut release on April 24th this year.
• Google Drives provides a whopping 5 GB of Free Space and 100 GB for 5$ , almost half the price of Dropbox services
• Google Drive can perfectly sync with almost every Google service like Docs.
• Google Drive is available on Windows, Mac and Android only

SkyDrive

• One of the most loved features of SkyDrive Cloud Storage is it’s astoundingly high Free Storage Space of 25 GB. But recently, it was dropped sharply to 7 GB for new customers
• Additional Space costs around 0.5$ per one GB
• SkyDrive only supports Microsoft and iOS platforms

Amazon Cloud Drive

• Cloud Drive is a Cloud Storage service from e-commerce giant Amazon. It offers 5GB Free Space
• Perfect File Sync and Backup Scheduling
• Features an online Cloud player which supports few Video and Music formats
• Premium Services are priced extremely high. 1 GB extension in addition to your Free Space costs around 1$ Per a GB

  Box

• Box is one of the most popular Free Cloud Storage. It offers a whopping 50GB of Free storage Space.
• It’s major thumbs down is it’s incapability to support file sync with your device
• It is available for Android as well as iOS handheld platforms

  SugarSync

 

• The Perfect File Syncing Cloud Storage Provider. It provides 5 GB of Free Space
• You can get additional bonus Space for free by referring your friends to the service
• Perfect Synchronization with any folder and filesystem, doesn’t require you to place in certain server side folders

Apple iCloud

• iCloud is the latest Cloud Storage Solution from Apple Cloud Computing network
• iCloud provides 5GB of Free Space. iCloud isn’t actually a alternative storage for your iOS devices. It synchronizes your multiple iOS device and your personal computer powered by Windows or Mac

Adrive

• Adrive is comparatively less popular Free Cloud Storage provider
• It Offers 50 GB of Free Space ! Too Good to Believe, Right?
• Very Poor Support, Since it is just a start up, there are many bugs out there and very least rated by it’s frustrated users.

  Benefits of Cloud Storage

• Data Backup: Free Cloud Storage provides an intuitive way to backup your files . You no longer need to worry about losing your daughter’s birthday photos or your favorite music, With Free Cloud Storage, you can recover your files anytime during crashes and virus invasion.

• Data Storage: You may not be concerned about Data Storage if you are an home user, but Large Data Networks require huge storage devices which require a lot of manual administration. Cloud Storage lets you access virtual data literally with a click of a button

• Portability: Cloud Storage brings you the power of the cloud. You can access your data from anywhere in the world

• Cost Effective: Many companies offer Free Cloud Storage which are of course restricted to limited Bandwidth and Storage limits.

You have your files, photos and documents on your home computer that you would like to access from other locations on different devices. Dropbox has been the de-facto choice for long but that could potentially change as Microsoft and Google have just entered the arena with the launch of Windows Live SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively.

The three services are very similar – you get online storage (you can access your files anywhere) and file synchronization – edit a document on one computer and the changes are propagated to all your other computers almost instantly.

SkyDrive vs Google Drive vs Dropbox

Supported Platforms

Storage Limits
Dropbox offers 2-3 GB of free online storage storage, Google Drive offers 5 GB while SkyDrive, if you are new, offers 7 GB of storage space.

You can upload files of any size to Dropbox through the desktop client while that limit is 2 GB in the case of SkyDrive. Both SkyDrive and Dropbox let you upload files up to 300 MB from the web browser while that limit is 10 GB in the case of Google Drive.

Storage Plans
If you are running out of storage space on SkyDrive, you can buy an additional 20 GB for about $10 per year or 50 GB for $25 per year. Dropbox Pro offers 50 GB of storage space for $99 per year while Google Drive offers an extra 20 GB for $2.49 per month.

Built-in File Viewers
Both SkyDrive and Dropbox web apps have built-in file viewers for most common file formats including Office documents, PDFs, videos and images. Google Docs supports even more formats – including Photoshop mockups and AutoCAD drawings – and no wonder that you can also view these files in Google Drive without additional software.

Unfortunately, maybe because of licensing issues, none of these drives will stream MP3 songs in the browser – you will to have download the MP3 file locally to play the audio.

File History
Your free Dropbox account will save any file’s history for 30 days meaning if you accidentally delete or change a file, you can easily restore the previous working version for the next 30 days. SkyDrive and Google Drive also store the previous versions of all files though they have not exactly specified how many reversions are preserved.

If you delete a file or folder inside SkyDrive web app, it’s gone forever whereas in the case of Dropbox and Google Drive, the files are moved to the Trash from where they can be easily restored.

Account Security
Since your Google Drive is connected to your Google Account, you can apply 2-step protection and non-authorized user won’t be able to access your online file even if they are aware of your Google username and password. This extra layer of protection is not available to Dropbox and SkyDrive users.

Google Drive and Dropbox also maintain a detailed log of every single change that was made to your files (or account) but this seems to be missing in SkyDrive.

File Search
This is one area where Google Drive has a definite upper hand.

When you search for a file on Dropbox.com, it returns results where the file names matche your search keywords. SkyDrive lets you search the content of documents that are in common Microsoft Office formats. Google Drive goes a step further as it can even read the text content of scanned documents and photographs using OCR. That is, if you have saved a photograph of the whiteboard to your Google Drive account, you should be able find that image by text without having to remember the filename.

Offline Access
The mobile apps of Dropbox and Google Drive let you save any document or file on your mobile for offline use.  Such a facility is not available in the iOS apps of Windows SkyDrive though you can always export the document to another app (like iBooks or Good Reader) from SkyDrive and access it offline.

Selective Sync
If you have multiple computers, all these “online drives” will copy your files across all your machines. Sometimes, you don’t want this to happen and both Dropbox and Google Drive offer you an option to selectively synchronize folders per computer. For instance, you can tell Dropbox not to download your family photographs folder on the work computer.  This saves bandwidth and your hard disk stays light too.

Selective Sync is however missing in SkyDrive.

SkyDrive offers plenty of storage space but the best part is that the SkyDrive web app lets you access files and folders of all your other computer right from within your browser. You just need to have SkyDrive on these machines and you can then easily access any of their files from any other computer, anywhere simply using your Windows Live ID.

SkyDrive is an absolute must-have service for Microsoft Office users because it gives you the ability to edit documents in the web browser while preserving all the formatting.

Google Drive offers the most pleasing interface, the search feature is brilliant and the new grid view lets you quickly browse your stored files visually. You can email any file from your Google Drive account to another user as an email attachment, a useful feature that’s missing in all the other online drives.

If you live in the Google ecosystem and do not have Microsoft Office on your computer, skip SkyDrive and go with Google Drive.

The basic Dropbox account offers a mere 2 GB of storage space but you can easily increase your account space to 16 GB by referring a couple of friends to Dropbox. Also, you can find tons of apps that make the Dropbox service even more powerful and useful.

Google Drive and Windows Live SkyDrive are extremely promising services but none of them support as many platforms as Dropbox does. The best part about Dropbox is that it just works and it won’t be easy even for Google and Microsoft to build the kind of developer ecosystem that currently exists around Dropbox.

Overview
                    I have been quite surprised in recent months at how many individuals and companies store content in the cloud without thinking about who might have access to their data and how these files are being used. There seems to be an implicit trust. After all, backing up data to the cloud is more reliable and recoverable than backing up to onsite hard drives.

Common sense mandates that you should do due diligence before storing data in the cloud. This article provides you with a four step roadmap to guide you through the process of assessing your cloud storage provider’s security policies.

1.    Read the Fine Print
We are all guilty of scrolling through terms and conditions on web sites and pressing the agree button without actually reading anything. Even though we have all heard horror stories about people who failed to read the small print, we either perceive that it is not worth spending time on or think that we will not be able to interpret it correctly.

A storage service provider needs to be able to manage the data stored on their network. This means that the service providers need be able to move your data and even translate your data to a more efficient format. It is natural that they need an agreement to allow them to do this, however these terms can leave your content exposed.

The first step to protecting your data is to take the time to read the small print and assess the risk to your content. If the terms are not clear or you determine that they put your data at risk, then you need to look for another storage service provider.

2.    Find Out Where Your Data is Being Kept
Many cloud storage providers have data centers located all around the world. The good news is that placing data centers overseas can provide redundancy and keep the cost of storage low. The bad news is that your data is subject to the regulation of the country and the state that it is stored in.
For example, suppose the storage provider data center is hacked and there is a risk that your data has been compromised. Depending on the country and state your data is stored in, your storage service provider may or may not be legally obligated to send you notification of the theft. Similarly, if the in-country law enforcement may issue the service provider with a warrant to view your data, the storage service provider is not obligated to notify the data owner that their data is subject to a legal investigation.

The second step is to make sure that the SLA agreement that you have with your storage service provider details where your data is being stored, and that you will be notified on an potential breach in security that could affect the integrity of your data.

3.    Determine if Your Videos and Images are Being Compressed
If you are storing pictures or videos in the cloud, you may be surprised to find that the storage service provider will compress them. You will therefore never be able to regain the original quality. Depending on your planned usage for your content this may be or may not be a problem.

Step three is simply to look for a site that does not compress your video and images. If you are not sure, run a test by simply uploading and downloading raw video footage.

4.    Encrypt, Encrypt, Encrypt
Many storage service providers encrypt your data while you are transferring your data between your computer and the cloud, but then store your data in plain text. This protects your data while it is being sent over the public Internet, but it is not protected against possible breached in security at the data center. Extract from Federal Trade Commission investigation last year:

Step four and perhaps the most important action you can take to protect your data in the cloud, is for you to encrypt your data prior to uploading it to the cloud and store your keys separately and securely.