Free Online Storage Services
Where to Stick It on the Web
Garrett Wasny, CMC | July, 2000“You can’t have everything,” wisecracks Steven Wright, the brilliant turn-of-phrase comic. “Where would you put it?”
For a growing number of entrepreneurs who rely on the Internet for all-things-business, this is no joke. From e-mails to digital music and portable-document-files to software, the web offers countless downloads and ever-rising oceans of digital content. Trouble is, where do you put all this e-stuff? Space on even the largest computer hard drives – 12 gigs or larger – can be quickly consumed by an operating system, office suite, and other content. In no time at all, you’re out of digital room, and scrambling for additional storage space. One solution is to buy an add-on storage hardware for your computer such as a zip drive, external hard drive, or CD-ROM writer. These provide additional space but at a cost: at this writing, a 100 Meg zip drive unit costs around $200. The unit also requires a 100 Meg zip disk which runs about $20 per disk.
A zero-cost and more flexible solution is to use one or more of the rising number of online storage services. These include Driveway (http://www.driveway.com/), Freedrive (http://www.freedrive.com/), iDrive (http://www.idrive.com/), and Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/). All let you store and access virtually any digital file – Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, MP3s, digital photos, you name it -- from any web-connected computer. Signing up to these services is free with registration, although the amount of storage space varies considerably by vendor, and how much information you are willing to provide about yourself and your business. Driveway offers a free 25 Meg account upon sign-up, while Freedrive provides 50 Megs of storage space at no charge. IDrive offers infinite – yes, infinite – space for any file you save from the web, such as an MP3, game, or other download, although they impose a 50 Meg limit on files from your desktop. Perhaps the best deal is Myspace which offers 300 Megs free storage space, although you must provide details about your interests, background, and computer as part of the registration process.
Along with the price, the other great advantage of online storage over external storage hardware is document sharing. Say you’ve created a 20 Meg Powerpoint presentation which you want to send ASAP to a colleague across the country. You could transmit this file by e-mail, although its large size would likely choke or crash the recipient’s system. You could copy the file to an external zip disk, although you would still have to arrange for the physical pickup and delivery of the disk to your colleague using a pricey overnight courier
service. The easiest and quickest option would be to upload the presentation file on to an online storage site, and give your colleague the log-in name and password to the service. In mere moments, the colleague could access and download the presentation, make changes, and upload the revised file for your review with no delays or courier charges.
Online storage is also an ideal backup tool, especially for road warriors. Say you’re traveling in a distant city when, horror of horrors, your laptop – with all your key presentations and documents on the hard drive -- is lost or stolen. No sweat. Borrow or lease any web-connected computer, and access the online storage site. If you’re smart, you would have made backup copies of all your critical files and uploaded them before your trip. Anytime and from anywhere, you can download the files, and be back in business in minutes.
The catch? Uploading files from your personal computer to the online storage site can be painfully slow. Depending on your connection speed, transferring relatively large files – say, 10 Megs or more – can take 30 minutes or more. If possible, use ADSL, cable or other high-speed connections when transferring data to online storage sites to save time. If you’re using a lower-speed 28.8K or even 56K modem to access the web, don’t despair. Just be patient and budget at least a few hours to complete the data transfer. Another tip: use the
Internet Explorer browser, not Netscape Communicator when accessing the online storage services. For reasons yet to be determined, the Communicator browser
continually crashed or froze when I attempted data transfers to the online storage sites, whereas the Explorer browser worked with few or no bugs.
Password-protected and totally secure, online storage services are superb tools which allow e-entrepreneurs to expand their digital storerooms, back up critical data, and share documents anytime, from anywhere, at virtually no cost.Based in Vancouver, Canada Garrett Wasny, CMC, is an e-commerce trainer and author. His latest book is World Business Resources.com. Mr. Wasny may be reached at gwasny@direct.ca or Tel: 604/878-4555.
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