The Cloud, Day 26: Too Much Cloud Can Be a Bad Thing
On Day 25 of the 30 Days with the Cloud series, I spelled out why i feel that cloud-based data storage and syncing is becoming mandatory attributable to mobile devices and SSD drives. Today i’ll put a caveat on there, though.
Am I backing off from the concept mobile devices and smaller SSD drives make cloud-based storage mandatory? No. However, using too many cloud services instantly cancels out the benefit and ease I’m using the cloud storage for within the first place.
I’m not even worried about data security. Well, i’m worried about data security, and that i realize that protecting the info I store within the cloud is my responsibility. Selecting a safe cloud data service is definitely among the primary factors in choosing between the numerous, many options which are available. But, the secret’s choosing one–not four, or five, or seven.
Google recently entered the cloud storage mix with Google Drive.I understand the draw. Dropbox offers 2GB of storage with its free account. Amazon Cloud, Ubuntu One, Google Drive, and Sugar Sync all provide 5GB of free storage , and SkyDrive has 7GB . Box gives users 5GB with its standard free account, however it has also run various promotions that give users 50GB at no cost under certain conditions. By establishing free accounts with all the above i may have almost 80GB of free storage online.
80GB can be awesome. My music files alone absorb 60GB so…oh wait. Not one of the accounts provides enough free space to carry all of my music in a single place-not even the 50GB account with Box. Meaning i will store all of my music online, but i need to put a couple of gigabytes here, and some gigabytes there. Then, if i need to store photos, or documents, or other data online I’ll ought to determine which of my free accounts still have some space left and tuck the info away there.
I’m sorry. That’s more effort than I’m willing to take a position in a technology that alleged to make my life easier. I’d much rather choose the cloud service that best meets my needs and spend a couple of dollars to get the storage capacity i want and just use one.
When i need to search out a file, or take a look at an image, or play a song, i do not need to must first determine which cloud it’s in. i would like so that they can reap the benefits of integration and seamless syncing across my PC, Mac, and mobile devices, and that i want all of it to simply work.
Each cloud storage service has pros and cons, so choosing is a subjective exercise. Music files purchased from Amazon don’t count against the capacity for Amazon Cloud, so if i purchased my music from Amazon it should make sense to compliment Amazon Cloud. Likewise, Google Docs files don’t count against the capacity of Google Drive, so it will make sense to make a decision Google Drive if I work in Google Docs plenty.
After narrowing down the alternatives in keeping with the kinds of knowledge i would like to store within the cloud, and the original advantages offered by some services, it comes all the way down to dollars. The pricing of the several cloud services varies widely, but so do the choices available for storage capacity. Just as an instance, if I narrow the choices to SkyDrive versus Google Drive, SkyDrive is less costly for storing 50GB or 100GB, but when i must store greater than 100GB I’d must pick Google Drive as the biggest capacity available on SkyDrive is 100GB.
The final analysis is modest, though: pick one cloud and keep it up. The simplicity and convenience is worth a couple of dollars.
Read the Last “30 Days” series: 30 Days With Windows Phone 7
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