Online Storage – Free Services

Online file storage provides many benefits to people. It makes for a fault tolerant backup system, You can upload your files to the online storage and access them anywhere, even share it with a select few or the general  public. If your computer hard disk crashes, you can rest assured that you have all the important documents safe somewhere online. Some of the modern online storage services even provide a facility to sync all files on your computer with your online storage account.

Here I have collected a few popular  free online storage services which provide value to the home user.

All these online storage services offer a free package with some storage space restrictions and charge a small amount for a premium package which does not have any restrictions.  Usually most home owners can do using the free package.

Mozy

Mozy provides free 2 GB storage space online to back up photos, documents, and music, on your computer. There are no monthly payment or fees of any kind and more importantly, no expiration which makes this service quite valuable to any home user. You can upgrade to a premium package with unlimited storage for a small payment of $4.95 per month. [Website]

Box.net

Box.net  is another online storage  service which provides a free package.  It’s Lite plan provides all its users 1 GB  free storage space, 25 MB file uploads and 5 collaboration folders. If you want more storage space, you have to upgrade to an Individual or Business plan. One of the USP of Box.net is it supports online collaboration between partners, clients or your team, and integrates with many popular online applications, such as Zoho, EditGrid, and Scribd. You can even open MS Word and Excel files using Zoho or preview files with Scribd’s iPaper. [Website]

SkyDrive

This is a service provided by Microsoft. SkyDrive provides a whooping 25 GB of free online storage on Windows Live for all your files. It allows you to keep your files private or share them with others. [Website]

Acrobat.com

Acrobat.com is an online service from Adobe provides not only 5 GB space to store your files online but also many other features. Such as creating a PDF of your files, sharing your files with others and even brainstorming with people across the web. To share your uploaded files with others, all you have to do is email them the link to the file and they  can download it from Acrobat.com website.

DropBox

DropBox is the easiest way to share and store your files online, what with drag and drop features, real time syncing with the files on your hard disk and easy sharing and access of all your videos, music and photos. It provides you a space of 2GB for free. You can also upgrade to a 50GB slice for a mere $100 per year. What is more, it provides a client software for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Visit dropbox.

Ubuntu One

This is a collection of services integrated with the Ubuntu desktop. It allows you to store, sync, share your files with others or work remotely from within your Ubuntu machine. Ubuntu One provides 2 GB of free space. For those who want additional space, it provides 10 GB for a monthly fee of $10.  Ubuntu One is run by Canonical Group Ltd, the creators of Ubuntu Linux. Visit Ubuntu One.

SpiderOak

SpiderOak  provides an easy, secure and consolidated free online backup, sync, sharing, access & storage solution for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian & Fedora). Apart from a 2GB lifetime free account, it also provides 100 GB online storage for a nominal $10.  What I really like about this service is its support for Linux platform. Visit website.

ADrive.com

ADrive.com provides 50 GB of online storage for free. You can upload movies, music, pictures and documents, access them online or share it with others.  [Website]

Textive.com

Textive.com allows  you to  store (backup) your documents. Make some of those documents public (publish them) and you can earn a share of the revenue from advertising that appears on your pages. It provides unlimited storage and bandwidth for your files for free. The downside of this online storage service is the limited file types supported by it. At present, it supports only PDF, Word and Text documents. Visit textive.

Wordpress.com

If you host a blog at wordpress.com, then you are automatically provided 3 GB space to store your files. The files are limited to PDF, images and documents. However, if you want to store music or video then you will have to buy an upgrade.

Gmail

GMail – Amazing really! There are ways in which you can use GMail service provided by Google as an online storage for free. GMail on last check provides an amazing  7.2 GB of storage for all your emails. And if you have a GMail account, you can use it to store all your files using free software such as GMailFS which provides a mountable Linux file system which uses your GMail account as its storage medium. Mac users have GDisk and Windows users can use GMail Drive shell extension. All three projects are third party hacks and are not in anyway associated with Google. And there is a size limit of 20 MB per file. So if you want to store a file over 20 MB size, you will have to split it into multiple pieces of 20MB or less.

Update (13-January-2010): Now store any file in Google Docs for free.

divShare

divShare is a very good online storage service which allows you to upload, store and share videos, images, documents and music. It provides a whooping 5GB of storage space and 10 GB / month bandwidth for downloads.

MediaShare

MediaShare is considered by some as the grand daddy of online storage for all your files. It provides unlimited disk space and download bandwidth for free. There is a 100 MB per file size limit and the free service is ad supported with a Pro service available for more serious users. And the funny thing is to use this facility, creating a free account is completely optional.

You may also be interested in tools which allow you to backup, sync and share your files without relying on third party services.

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