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Tech Talk:
Cloud storage

By Mike Putman · The Mainstream
Published November 14, 2012

Most students can remember dashing to class only to realize that they forgot to print the paper they need to turn in. They rush into the library to print a copy and realize that their flash drive is safely plugged into their computer at home, or worse they have lost it. Most of us have sat down at a computer in the library or a lab and found someone’s flash drive sitting there. Cloud storage solves this problem.

Cloud storage is not as scary as it sounds; cloud storage simply means instead of storing that paper on your flash drive that you store it on a cloud server. What’s a Cloud server? A cloud server is a device that you connect to on the Internet where you store your documents, pictures, or even music.

There are plenty of companies out there that supply cloud storage for little or no fee.  For example, Google now offers Drive which allows you to store up to 5 gigs on their drive for free. The downside is that the user must create the document in Google Docs, but that is much preferred to a lost paper. To access the Drive, simply sign into your Gmail account and select the Drive tab.

A company by the name of Symform will also give you up to 200 gigs of storage for free, but there is a catch. According to the Symform website, the company gives users their first 10 gigs of storage free, just by downloading their software. Users can get unlimited storage space by sharing space on their own computers. After the fist 10 gigs of storage, users must contribute 2 gigs of space on their computer to get an additional 1 gig of space from Symform.  The system is quite secure, and the information stored on their server is not open to anyone except for the user.

Companies like Carbonite, MyPCBackup, Dropbox and JustCloud offer cloud services for a fee and are quite easy to use. Most systems break your data into small bits and transfer the file effortlessly.

Cloud storage is a great way to save money; imagine no more buying flash drives to lose and no more frustration due to lost flash drives. Never again lose important documents. Now  you can access your documents from anywhere with an Internet connection.