9 Free Online Storage/Backup Solutions–for Varying Needs
The price of storage has been dropping dramatically for some time now, and along with that trend, web workers now have an ever-expanding set of options for backing up and sharing files online. In addition, the various services you can use offer many different kinds of options–so how much capacity you get with free online offerings isn’t necessarily the only issue any more. In this post, I’ll round up some of the best free services to consider, and what their specialties are.
I mentioned Adrive here once before, and after continuing to use it, I’m impressed with it. It’s a no-frills online storage and backup solution, and the real attraction to it is how much capacity you get: a whopping 50 gigabytes. That’s much more than the 5GB you get free with Xdrive, or the 1GB you get free with Box.net.
Speaking of Box.net, its main attraction is the large set of free applications that you can now use in conjunction with it through its OpenBox service. You can do online editing with Zoho, document signing with EchoSign, CAD previewing with Autodesk Freewheel, working within the ThinkFree productivity suite, cropping photos with Picnik, and more.
I’m also a fan of some of the on-the-fly services out there, designed to let you shoot files and images online and share them with colleagues as instantly as possible. Recently, I mentioned Clip2Net, which is really good for these speed collaboration applications. I also like Drop.io which creates a web site for you to deposit files on, and you can password protect it. Another player to look into if you’re interested in this type of online storage and sharing is DropBoks.
For folks interested in a Mac client for backups and storage, Mozy remains a popular choice. And if you’re interested in backups in particular, MediaMax [link dead and now removed] is worth looking into. You get 25GB of free online storage, and you also get a free piece of client software called MediaMax XL Beta which allows you to automate backups so you don’t have to do the work. ed: MediaMax is now The LinkUp. With the change in focus comes the elimination of the free service as described here. See comment below for more information.
Do you you know of any good online storage and backup solutions?
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Nice roundup here.
I’m a fan of Mozy and Drop.io. Mozy does great daily backups of my critical files. And Drop.io is an awesome collaboration tool. Each Drop even has its own conference call line!
SugarSync all the way, especially for the Mac. It’s the easiest sync program I’ve ever used and allows me to sync my multiple computers with their online storage. I can browse my files from my mobile, and email them on the go if I need to. I can securely access them from any web browser. They just dropped their prices, too.
Ignore my previous comment. I failed to read the word “free” in the post. =)
amazon s3 & jungle disk! check it out
Anybody tried MyBloop.com? Free Unlimited (yes, unlimited!) Storage.
SpiderOak is free for the first 2gb. Https://spideroak.com
SendAlong is in the same realm as Drop.io and DropBoks, – it lets you send large files to any email address, along with some advanced features like file download tracking and password protection. There are also no ads (even on free accounts).
In the coming months SendAlong will be providing permanent online storage as well.
I use Jungle Disk ( Mac, Linux and Windows ) to backup to Amazon S3.
I’ve been pretty happy with Mozy. The real problem with it — and with most of these — is its lack of support for NAS drives. Mozy does offer support for external USB drives, which is why I switched from Carbonite. But NAS support is only available with a premium business package that’s just a little too expensive for me. As for “free,” well, you get what you pay for. Mozy’s free version is fine if your needs are modest, but $4.95 a month is a pretty reasonable price for secure, reliable offsite backup.
I’ve been using Zoogmo. This is a free backup solution that lets you build your own backup network of space on your own or your friends computers. After the initial setup it runs in the background automatically backing up those files and folders you have selected to watch. It is secure and fast and I think its cool that it uses the existing resources of unused space on computers.
http://www.zoogmo.com