“Simply” Store Your Files Online

Posted by on 03/16 at 10:58 AM Permalink
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Files. They tend to multiply on your hard drives faster than you can keep up with them. To be safe, you’ll want to backup many of those files. A good way to to do that is with an external hard drive, as discussed in a previous TechTip.

However, you might not be able to justify the expense of an external drive—you might not have enough files to put even a small dent in a drive’s storage capacity. Or, you might want to have access to the files from wherever you are and not have to worry about lugging (or losing) a CD or a USB flash drive.

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    Posted by Robert Cresawn  on  03/16  at  02:31 PM

  1. Great Article, good information

    2. Posted by Art  on  03/23  at  08:34 AM

  2. There are other services like this that readers may find useful. It’s good to have options.

    Mozy (http://mozy.com/)
    Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com/)

    Check out the Lifehacker Online Storage Faceoff.
    http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-faceoff/online-backup-final-round-mozy-vs-carbonite-302597.php

    3. Posted by Nelson R Holt  on  03/23  at  09:52 AM

  3. You quote $0.15 per MEGAbyte, but it’s quoted on S3 as GIGAbytes.  A hefty difference in price!

    4. Posted by Bob Wojciechowski  on  03/23  at  09:56 AM

  4. You said “The monthly fee for using S3 is 15 to 18 cents per megabyte that you store.”

    18 cents a MB?  that is $180 for one GB per Month.

    Something wrong here…

    5. Posted by Jerry Greenberg  on  03/23  at  10:23 AM

  5. The article price info states cost per megabyte. It probably should be per Gigabyte.

    at $0.15/mb, 1 GB of storage would cost $180 per month.  I can buy a lot of storage for that..

    Jerry

    6. Posted by Jerry Palsson  on  03/23  at  11:11 AM

  6. You should have mentioned that even if your data is secure (a doubtful assumption), it will probably be harvested by data miners.  These sites that offer to host your information are usually interested in marketing it. After all, that’s why they go into the business—to make money.

    7. Posted by GaryQ  on  03/23  at  11:39 AM

  7. was that a typo? did you mean to say 15 cents per Meg and not gig… since my home files are mesured in Tb… I hope it’s gig and not 150 dollars per gig… then later talk about buckets of five gigs… I hope it’s gigs ... must go check it out I think… but so hopping it’s gig… like gmail storage <smiles>

    8. Posted by mike  on  03/23  at  11:59 AM

  8. In your article you stated 0.15-0.18 per megabyte , it is actually per gigabyte. I was reading and thinking wow thats exspensive, it would cost alot to store my photos on there. Then i checked the website.

    9. Posted by Bill Carrigan  on  03/23  at  12:26 PM

  9. I can’t seriously believe that S3 is “one of the cheapest and best alternatives out there for storage.” At 18 cents per Megabyte per month, that’s $180.00 per MONTH for one Gigabyte.  For that you can buy a darned good 500GB external drive; good 100GB external drives cost less than $100 nowadays, and smaller drives are of course cheaper yet.  Even flash drives are getting cheap enough to be seriously considered.

    For the cost of a couple of months storage of 1GB of files you could buy several 100GB drives and keep them in different places for security- and not worry about hackers.  If the DoD and CIA have to worry about hackers, why would anyone believe data would be secure in an advertised storage place for personal data?

    The one point I will concede is that your data would be accessible from anywhere; but that’s just what I was saying about hackers.  If it’s encrypted that would obviously make a difference, but you did not even mention encryption.

    10. Posted by Danny McCormick  on  03/23  at  02:54 PM

  10. For online storage try out ADrive at http://adrive.com they give you 50GB of free storage space supported by small ads, so they claim that the service will always be free.
    You can make multiple folders and folders within folders to separate your uploaded files.
    50GB for free is a lot of space - much more than many employers allow you.
    I wouldn’t upload any confidential or classfied files, but for general storage it seems to be a pretty good deal.

    11. Posted by Joan  on  03/23  at  03:35 PM

  11. There are free alternatives. Google offers free storage if you have a gmail account that’s over and above what the email has. My ISP provider offers a free 10 MB website for every email address you have (can have up to 7 email addys). I use one to save certain files that would really hurt if I lost them. In addition, there are numerous free sites for image storage, such as photobucket.

    The downside of this scheme is the files are spread across various sites because of size and file type limitations. I use this free off (my) site storage scheme for those files that I wouldn’t be able to duplicate any other way. I also have an external hard drive for my disk images for fast recovery, but if my home burned down, I’d still be able to get at selected files.

    12. Posted by Tyler  on  03/23  at  03:36 PM

  12. Another good online storage site is mediafire.com
    It’s free and has unlimited space
    the upload size is about 100 mb per file, and you must upload files one at a time, but over all it’s a great site

    13. Posted by Bernoulli  on  03/23  at  03:50 PM

  13. Regarding your review of the S3 system: You say $0.18 per month per megabyte (the size of ONE digital photo)is Cheap? That’s $180/mo, or $2180 per year, per Gigabyte.  My photo subdirectory is over 20 GB. 

    Have you priced USB drives lately?

    14. Posted by Alan Segal  on  03/23  at  04:33 PM

  14. I believe the price is .15 to .18 per GB not
    per MB.

    15. Posted by Sean Gayle  on  03/23  at  05:44 PM

  15. Good article and the url to the list is good, however you left off one of the best, Carbonite.com.  It’s a on-line service but uses great encryption and REAL-TIME backup.  This is invaluable because you are always backing up and the overhead is very small on your system.  The cost is $49/year/system.  That’s pennies for super backup.  No I do not work for them, I am a book store owner and retired ex-system analyst for a Fortune 15 company.

    16. Posted by home-safety  on  03/23  at  07:46 PM

  16. Sounds like a deal. With a cost of only 15 to 18 cents per megabyte, it would be very hard to find anything comparable. Thank you for posting about it.

    17. Posted by Philip Storvik  on  03/24  at  06:28 AM

  17. You might want to correct the price quoted in the article. It’s $0.15 per GIGABYTE. That price per MB would make this service useless. It might also be good to mention that they charge you for every access, deposit or withdrawal - the only thing they don’t charge for is deletes.

    18. Posted by John H  on  03/24  at  08:49 AM

  18. Is there a simple solution for those of us who pay for web hosting?  My hosting plan allows practically unlimited storage and transfers.  It would seem that a secure ftp or some other transfer would give me lots of backup space.  I just need the knowledge of how to make it secure up there on my site.

    19. Posted by JC  on  03/24  at  02:45 PM

  19. I checked the pricing, and it is a typo. It is $.15 for Gigabytes not MB…

    20. Posted by Bill Carrigan  on  03/24  at  04:57 PM

  20. Glad to see the price quoted in the article was an error- that the cost is actually per GB, not per MB.  That does make quite a difference, and I should have checked for myself before I wrote my comments.

    I assumed the author had proof-read his article before submitting it, and we all know the breakdown of the word ASSUME. wink However, my comments about security from hackers still apply.

    Off-site physical storage is the safest way to keep backups, even if it’s NOT the most convenient; security is often inversely proportional to convenience.  Add strong encryption to off-site storage of your backups, and it’s a real winner.

    21. Posted by GeekMike  on  03/25  at  08:39 AM

  21. Thank you Bill and everyone else in pointing out the pricing error.  It has been updated and corrected....

    Cheers,
    -GM

    22. Posted by Sean Gayle  on  03/25  at  10:30 AM

  22. I mentioned Carbonite earlier.  I have no problem even uploading secure info because “Carbonite encrypts your files twice before they leave your PC. They remain encrypted on our servers, making it virtually impossible for anyone to access your files without your secret password. Carbonite uses a combination of encryption techniques, similar to those used by banks, to safeguard your data.” I agree with Bill that offsite backup is best, especially if you have control of the off-site facility.  But for individual and small businesses, I would use Carbonite or something similar for secure data.

    Sean

    23. Posted by rex  on  04/02  at  01:23 PM

  23. If your new to computing or simply upgrading from an earlier version of window then this is ideal, with over 5 hours of contents taking you through just about everything you ever needed to know about computers.

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