Subscribe to our 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 syncronize 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 offeres UNLIMITED online storage - I have not yet checked this out and woudl 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
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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.
Many here: http://freeuploadserver.blogspot.com/
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...
Hi Andy, Good work!
eSnips maybe another option, support up to 5GB of free storage, manage folders, multiple types of files, exe files seem not accepted but zip files yes.
http://www.esnips.com/
With more added, this could become "10 Places to Upload and Share Files for Free" :>)
Err...What about unlimited free storage?
http://zia.blogspot.com/2008/03/mybloopcom-unlimited-free-file-storage.h...
As of the time of posting, DropBox Basic plan only offers 2GB of free storage.
Drop Box does not have upload limit.. The 10MB limit is for Box.net.. They're both different services, however does somewhat the same thing..
So it's an error up there..
Here's a page from my site that lists services that offer 5 to 50 GB of free space:
http://yknot.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentGeneric.zzutafkolycausgr&pa...
Personally, I've been using Mozy for over 2 years and love it! You don't get 10 GB, but you start with 2 GB and can get additional free space by referring friends.
Microsoft's Skydrive has been giving you 25gig of free storage per account for over a year.
Please can mention how long files are stored for? I think FileFactory free account deletes them after 90 days.
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