Get our Latest Finds
Subscribe to our RSS feed or enter your email address below to get the feed delivered to you by email:
Follow Gizmo
Using this Site
Top Rated
Gizmo's Freeware is Recruiting
We are currently looking for people with skills and/or interest in the following areas:
- Rootkit Scanner and Remover
- Web Browser for Android
If this sounds like you then click here for more details
Best Free Online Storage (Draft)
I am researching and building a review for the best free online storage. Here are some of my initial thoughts and findings. If you have experience with one or more of these applications please comments and share your perspective. What matters most to you:
- Amount of Storage
- Ease of Setting up
- Ease in Sharing
- Download Speed
- Ability to synch with PC
Looking to share files, music, video, movies and just about anything on your computer. Free file sharing has been around for a while, but the stakes are getting higher. Some services offer UNLIMITED free Storage for file sharing.
One of the most popular offerings allow you to synchronize with your PC and keep the files current. Drop Box - Limit on the free account is 2MB
Personally I like Drop.io which gives you up to 100MB PER DROP with NO LIMIT on the number of drops and a host of features and unique ways to add and share your drop.
I just "stumbled upon" a new player competing for a free place to stash your files on line: MySites which is giving up to 10GB free storage. I'm just starting to play with it but I thought I'd Share it with our community of Freeware lovers.
MyBloop.com offers UNLIMITED online storage - I have not yet checked this out and would appreciate feedback from anyone familiar.
Andy - andrews
Editor of Best Stickies and Best FTP
Check out my blog for other FREE tools for free tech tools with a slant on things useful for a small business
- Article type:
Printer-friendly version
Comments
Please look at security, too. Anyone who uses such a service to help manage their online login credentials will appreciate the advantage of a service that encrypts the data in transmission and the files in storage.
You may want to include the Wikipedia article "Comparison of online backup services" in your research. Its comparison table has a column indicating which services offer "Encryption" and another column for "Free online storage (non-trial)"; seems like a good starting place, with over a dozen more columns of comparison data.
You might add DriveHQ, to your list. I just read about it in a magazine review, and see that it has encryption but is not in that Wikipedia article.
Just to note:
Both Mybloop.com and Drop.io, as mentioned in the review above, are no longer available.
mysites is a blank webpage.
Someone on this site put me onto SugarSync, and I much prefer it over DropBox. Improvements are; 5GB for free, sync any folder (not just the special DropBox folder) without resorting to tricks like symbolic links, and the Android app is a real sync not just a "download when you ask for it" app. The Android app also has an automatic phone photo backup option. I also found the SugarSync help more helpful than DropBox. I don't use either SugarSync or DropBox for online storage of all my music or images because it would cost me more than I'm prepared to spend.
So top two priorities for me are: sync to PC (and Android phone), then amount of storage.
I have been using ADrive for awhile. 50GB free storage.
[Moderator's note : Edited out mention of unsatisfactory site]
I would also consider the max file size for service selection. This becomes very relevant when uploading a large compressed + encrypted file that includes folders with sensitive data.
I've started using Microsoft Live SkyDrive (skydrive.com) also over the last few months. It offers a very decent 25GB of storage space. You can choose to share files with other people or not by setting privileges. It also has a nice photo album store and you can upload, create and edit Microsoft Office docs online which is a nice touch. Fair enough, files have a 50MB limit, but it's ok for most requirements. The main reason that I use SkyDrive is that it's owned by Microsoft & I know it's not going to close down tomorrow and I lose all of my backups. I've traditionally not been a big fan of Microsoft but I have started to really like this product and am using it a lot now.
What about a-drive? Does google offer anything yet? I think I saw A-drive had 50 gig Free.
Drop.io is winding down...
http://drop.io/future.htm
I also find MediaFire to be the best online storage. It has unlimited storage, and it's free! It is also quite easy to use.
Link: http://www.mediafire.com/
Before you recommend a site check it's reputation, WOT mywot.com reports this as a dangerous site, of course I ignored that warning on your recommendation. Thanks for the MALWARE attack!
There is no such warning attached to mediafire.com from WOT.
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/mediafire.com
That said, mediafire is a file hosting service so you should always take great care with what you choose to download from there, especially if you do not know the source. Most antimalware programs now offer a right click option to scan downloaded files before execution and some even scan during the download.
I beg to differ. Though this is a great site, it has a downside that I'm personally not ok with:
I used to get a warning email every 2 weeks or so saying that if I didn't log in, then my data would be purged. I would log in whenever I got that alert, till this one time recently when I forgot to do so and I lost all of my data from the store.
Great site, great UI, but I'm looking for more peace of mind. I currently also have an account on Divshare and that seems to be treating me fine so far.
another one that is easy to use and 5 GB is divshare
www.divshare.com
Hi - I'm a little late to the party, but I have compiled a list of the online storage sites that I've run across recently, and I thought it might be helpful to post them in this forum for some of the people that might be looking for some ideas.
I haven't checked them all out, so it's not possible for me to recommend them all, and they are not in any particular order.
The offerings are from 1GB to unlimited, and Live Mesh now requires Vista or Win7, but almost all are free and offer paid programs for additional features or storage.
Hope this is helpful.
http://www.elephantdrive.com/
http://www.mediafire.com/
https://www.yousendit.com/
http://www.adrive.com/
http://www.glidedigital.com
Moderator's Comment: List of links reduced.
Thanks for contributing but the number of links you posted was a little unmanageable, and so had to be reduced. Contributions are always welcome but every link has to be tested by site Moderators so please consider this when posting:)
Thanks,
garth
Site Moderator.
Live Mesh is working great for me. Integrates with Explorer, folders on your desktop. Put a file in there and it syncs to your other connected machines AND to your 5GB online storage.
I also was looking for online storage which allows uploading entire folders, and I found a Firefox extension which enables you to upload entire folders to one of my 7396 MB (and counting) accounts. Its called Gspace, and it here: http://www.getgspace.com/ I even uploaded an 80MB folder, and over 50mb in one day. So I thank God for such a find (and Gmail), and wanted to pass it on.
It's great when it works. last few times I tried to use gspace it wouldn't log in. looking for something else.
I know by fact that Mediafire is by far the best.
Features For Free Users:
- Unlimited File Storage
- 100 MB Per File
- Unlimited Uploads
- Unlimited Downloads
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Unlimited Simultaneous Downloads
- Image Galleries
- Support for Download Accelerators
- Resume Disconnected Downloads [With in 24 hours of click]
And according to my experiences these are the things that matter the most:
- Amount of Storage
- File Deletion
- Bandwidth
- Tools
- Support for Download Accelerators [This really matters to me but I am not sure about other people]
- Rewards [Most of the popular file hosting have rewards. This matters to a lot of people but if your looking for the "best" file hosting then this won't matter]
I've had a Microsoft SKYDRIVE account for a long time which I've never used. I don't know what came over me the other day, but I decided to go actuallly login to my LIVE account and kinda' half set it up a little... though I have no idea why. I HATE social networking sites. But I AM interested in the SKYDRIVE part of it. I mean... a whopping 25GB... c'mon!
I even logged-in to my domain registration control panel and set up...
http://skydrive.[my_personal_domain_name]
...so I could get at it more quickly, without having to remember an arcane URL. I did something similar for my OfficeLive account (as long as I was setting things up).
SKYDRIVE has got a 50MB-per-file limit, though. I just learned that the hard way when I tried to upload a 52MB file to my public folder so I could have someone go pick it up from there.
So, before I even get started with SKYDRIVE, already a limitation which has me wondering what else is out there.
Still, though... 25GB. Wow. Can't sneeze at that, you gotta' admit.
I'm not gonna' give up on it 'til it really screws up. Who knows, it might just become my default online storage. We'll see.
I have used MyBloop and was pretty impressed.
It gets a green from WOT, but has a yellow from McAfee as it looks like their software used to install the Dealio toolbar. I am not sure if it still does as I have not used the software for uploads (you can upload files, not folders through browser). it appears the more recent version of the software has been given a green from McAfee-but the site remains yellow.
Right now limited to users from United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Romania, Australia, New Zealand.
Speeds were good.
File size limit 1GB
Files are stored indefinitely
Infinite bandwidth use, files can be downloaded any number of times
Just about any kind of file can be uploaded (restrictions on sharing video, music for copyright reasons-must be marked private-although music can be streamed)
Files can be marked private
Downside is that only files, not folders, can be uploaded through the browser. Although you can upload multiple files, it would be easier to do folders. I am waiting to hear back from them on the software issue as that allows folders.
I am not aware of any sync options.
Steve
I get a lot of timeouts trying to get to MyBloop. I finally was able to land on its front page, and it looked kinda' interesting, but when I tried to go to another of its pages... timeout again.
Obviously, it's swamped. Or at least it is at this particular writing.
But that won't do. Whatever one chooses in this category HAS TO WORK... and be reliable... always.
Maybe I just caught it on a bad night or something.
I just came here to say that MyBloop was dead as I have had timeouts for a few weeks now and have not been able to access it at all.
Seeing your post I guess they may still be alive, but as you say this is not a reliable alternative.
https://www.Dropboks.com offers 1 Gig of free space, but what I like about it is that it is very SIMPLE - simplicity is useful for just having a place to backup some files online. Have a look at it and add it to your list.
ADrive's Economy package offers 50GB of free space. Link: www.adrive.com/static/storageplans_basic
It's heavily Java-based, though.
But it seems nice, otherwise. I signed-up and am fiddling around with it some.
We'll see.
I loved aDrive in beta because they let you use an 'agent' to upload/sync files/folders.
The use of their agent and FTP access now requires a fee (7/month) Not bad.. 1.5 lattes right?
I like their sharing features as well and I have only had one time in 2-3 years where my data was unavailable for about 3 days for maintance.
So for now the free is fine for file storage... but it's a hasle to use the 'java' interface for backing up family picture folders.
I'm now back to using an external drive and I update aDrive when I have spare time.
I also cannot comment on the speed, it's not bad.. but still slow for gigs of data. I suspect the paid FTP version is faster.. but I dont' know.
FWIW
thegeeknme
they also do not 'purge/delete' your data after a certain amount of time... something to watch for in these services.. especially free ones...
Post new comment