Introduction
It is the world of data and we are filled with thousands of important information on our personal life, financial information, business, daily job, kids education records, property documents, etc. In the current digital world, most of the above mentioned data can be used only in the digital format like storing the data in MS Office applications, Word documents or the PDF files. The other type of data like physical documents too has to be maintained in the digital format because if you are missing the original copy, digital records can be used for the proof. If you imagine a moment about loosing the whole data in an accident or natural calamity, you would end up in a trouble to continue your life.
Few take the backup of that data in the safe external hard drive and thinks that it is the most safe way to keep your data. No, it is not safe if you are keeping your data in any of your physical format because it may get destroyed by an accident. Thanks to the emergence of cloud computing, there are number of companies offering the online storage facility to sync your data to their server and can be accessed anywhere in the world by using the Internet. This article explores few popular players in the market and explains how to use the tools. It is very important for you if you are not already familiar with these services. If you are already familiar with these services, please share your experience in the comments section.
I have given the overview of each tool and then linked to the technical site which explains in detail. There are plenty of tools in the market, i have listed only very few. Also each tools offer a free storage which is sufficient for a normal user. I have been using these tools for quite long time, if you have any doubts please post it in the comments section.
SugarSync
I have been personally using this tool for few years with the premium account. It offers the 5 GB of free storage and provides very advanced client software for the auto backup of your data. If you download the desktop utility to install and configure the folders to sync automatically, then when ever there is any changes detected, it will upload the latest file to the server. You need not think of uploading the files.
You can configure the sugarsync for multiple computers and mobile devices for the same account. The data will be synced across all the computers. For example, if you have done changes in your office computer, when you come and open your home laptop, the latest file will be downloaded to you. If you are looking for the pure backup tool and don’t need a online editing of files, then I would strongly recommend this tool. Read more about this toll in the below link.
DropBox
Dropbox is very similar to Sugarsync and it is most popular then sugarsync. It has the same features and use what I have mentioned in the sugarsync. This is very good tool for taking the backup of data. But, it offers only 2 GB as the free storage compared to the 5 GB of sugar sync. Read more about this toll in the below link.
Google Docs
Google Docs is from our favorite company Google. Also it is one of the first company made lot of changes to the cloud computing and released on line editing of the documents. In the initial days, Google Docs offered only the editing of documents through browser. It can be stored in the online account and edited in the browser without downloading the document to your desktop. Google started rolling out the new file formats support for its customers. In the latest version, the following files are supported:
- Word Document
- Excel
- Presentations
- Other types
It is almost one year back, Google has updated the Google Docs to upload any type of files or folders to take the backup. It offers 1 GB of free storage. The advantage of using Google Docs is that it is very well integrated with other google’s products. For example, if you have a word document on google docs, it can be attached to your gmail without downloading that document. Read more about this toll in the below link.
Other Services
The above three are the most popular services for uploading your large amount of data into the server. Apart from these services, there are many other services providers offering the online storage.
- Skdrive is offered from MicroSoft which offers the free storage to its customers. It is not having the advanced tool but you can use your hotmail email account to use this service.
- Amazon Cloud Drive is the another leading online storage solutions targeting the customers to store large amount of data and use it in its products. The targeting customers are who are purchasing product in Amazon’s store and use it in its product Kindle. If you own a Kindle, then it is very much useful for accessing the content from cloud storage.
Summary
This is not related to the investment or finance related article but i felt it would be useful for many of the readers. In the modern world accessing internet is common for everyone. Keeping your data on the safe place is one of the important task. If you have not taken any action on this, please spend some time on safeguard your data. If you need further details related to this topic or have any suggestion for the articles, please post it in the comments section.
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February 29, 2012 at 3:06 am
You can also try out Zoolz like I did, I dont trust private servers and prefer to know where my data is stored. You get 4GB for free and its backing up to Amazon S3
February 29, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Thank you for the suggestion. How ever all the companies are storing in their server.
Thanks,
Krishna
August 3, 2012 at 1:45 am
I was just reading another post by a fellow PF blogger that outlined the details of life insurance and how the one provided through work is not enough. I know that the one provided through my work covers $120k, but I have no clue what the details are. I still need to look into this more.From Shopping to Saving recently posted..Why Do We Enable People to Spend Money While Shopping?