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Internet October 2001 • Vol.9 Issue 10 Page(s) 129-130 in print issue |
Find Storage Space Online Share, Back Up & Access Your Files Online Using These Services We Explored | ||
Jump to first occurrence of: [FILESANYWHERE]  Whether you call it online storage or a virtual hard drive, the ability to save your data to a secure spot on the Internet is useful for anyone on the go or requiring safe data backups. Even better, using online storage is almost always a snap. The best services let you upload and download files easily through your Web browser, or use special software interfaces to drag and drop files to the Internet. A few use third-party software, such as TeamDrive, which treats your online storage like a real hard drive on your Windows system. There are many reasons to try online storage (several of which we covered in detail back in the April issue of the Smart Computing Guide To PC Today), but the most compelling include simple and secure backup; the ability to share files with friends, family, or co-workers in any location; and easy access to your files while you travel. Easy and simple, yes, but online storage is no longer the fabulous freebie it was just a few months ago. Although hard drive space is still inexpensive for vendors to offer, selling ad space on a virtual drive's Web interface didn't turn out to be the grand moneymaking scheme many had hoped for. Now that the Internet economy is feeling the pinch (advertising sales online aren't exactly burning up the market), the providers of these free virtual hard drives have also scaled back. Many online storage services now concentrate on the business enterprise market only or have begun charging for the privilege of parking files in their space. Fortunately, some free storage options are still out there—if you know where to look.  Free & Fee-based Storage. It's not difficult to score free storage online. In fact, just about every Internet or e-mail account includes a few free megabytes of space intended for a Web page. In a pinch, this space can be used to store other types of data files, as well. This space usually requires uploading or downloading files via FTP (File Transfer Protocol), which isn't always easy. Online storage sites simplify the process. At its most basic, online storage accounts give you a form on a Web site that you can use to browse files on your hard drive and then upload to a remote storage area. Once uploaded, you can access your storage account and see a list of your files from any computer connected to the Web. At press time, few free storage services remain; foremost among them are Yahoo! Briefcase and MSN File Cabinets. The biggest advantage to making the leap from a free storage service to a fee-based service is more space. Spending a few bucks per month may get you some extras, such as the ability to grab files off the Internet using a Palm device, or the ability to mail files to multiple recipients with one click. For this article, we limited our focus to sites with free services or those that provide a free trial to consumers for up to a month. E-ttach. E-ttach is as much about sending files as it is about storing them. If you enter a list of e-mail addresses of your friends, family, or co-workers, these people are notified by E-ttach when a file is available for download. The individuals you specified can then connect to the Internet and access the file using their Web browser. The cost isn't cheap, however. After the 30-day free trial you can choose between a version for individuals that costs $14.95 per month for 500MB of storage or a five-person multiuser account for $24.95 per month for 1GB of storage, which is more suited to a small office. Additional 500MB blocks costs $9.95 each. http://www.e-ttach.net FilesAnywhere. FilesAnywhere offers the cheapest fee-based storage we found. Start with a free trial of 50MB for a month, then for $3.95 per month or $42 per year, you can keep 100MB of data in your virtual hard drive. You can purchase up to 2GB of extra space for $34.95 per month. The service's e-Send feature lets you send files directly from your Web storage to someone via e-mail. Because not all e-mail software can handle attachments, the e-Link feature sends messages with links to files in your virtual drive. Recipients then click the links to download files at their leisure, and you receive confirmation when the file is accessed. http://www.filesanywhere.com FreeDrive. FreeDrive offers 5MB of no-frills Web-accessible storage space for free. Upgrade to its SmartDrive plan (65MB for $4.95 per month or $40.95 per year) or PowerDrive plan (150MB for $9.95 per month or $99.50 per year) and you'll get all the full-service extras: Access your backups right through your Palm, have FreeDrive burn (copy) your stored contents to a CD you can use as a backup, share your files privately with an unlimited number of people, or create an online photo album. You'll also find the FreeDrive service offered at AceDisk.com (http://www.acedisk.com). http://www.freedrive.com MSN File Cabinets. Anyone with a Microsoft Passport account, which is just about anyone using Hotmail or MSN, has access to their own 30MB of storage at MSN File Cabinets. Creating your storage folders is a bit confusing, however. The site asks you to create a Web site/community even if you're only using it for storage, but from there you can access the Communities page and click My Communities to access the storage folder. Clicking the Files link lets you add or view your stored bits and bytes. Adding files requires using Internet Explorer to access a special management tool for the browser that displays the contents of your hard drive so you can choose the files to upload. http://communities.msn.com/filecabinets Storage Point. Storage Point's WebDrive makes your 200MB to 1GB of data available from the Windows Desktop using Windows Explorer or via the browser. You can also use a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)-enabled device, such as a cell phone, to send or delete files. Try the 30-day, 50MB trial version and then upgrade. Prices are on the high side, though: $12.95 per month or $139.95 per year for 200MB to start, which is about double that of FilesAnywhere. But it does SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)-encrypt data as you transfer it, which makes this an attractive option if you are swapping sensitive or private files. http://www.storagepoint.com Xdrive. One of the former heavyweights of free storage online, Xdrive is now concentrating on the corporate market, but it still offers Xdrive Plus accounts for individual users. You can store 25MB of data for free for 15 days, and then you must pay $4.95 a month to use the storage service. You can boost space in increments of 25MB for $2.95 a month or 100MB increments for $6.95 per month up to a total of 1GB. Xdrive offers SSL encryption for data protection and both Windows and Palm software (only on the wireless Palm VII, however) for getting to the data without using your Web browser. http://www.xdrive.com Yahoo! Briefcase. Sign up for a free Yahoo! account and you'll have access to 30MB of free storage at Yahoo! Briefcase. You can access your files using either the Web interface or the optional Yahoo! Drive tool, which must be downloaded and installed separately. Yahoo! Drive makes your online hard drive space appear as a drive letter on your Windows 95/98/Me system. Share files or folders in your briefcase with friends and family (if they have a Yahoo! account), or make files visible to the public by designating a Public folder and handing out a URL (uniform resource locator; Web address) to your storage area. The maximum file size you can upload and store is 5MB. http://briefcase.yahoo.com Other fee-based sites worth mentioning that don't offer a free trial version for end-users are bigVAULT Storage (http://www.bigvault.com), IBackup (http://www.ibackup.com), and My Docs Online (http://www.mydocsonline.com). Each has a Web-based interface for accessing files, or will work with TeamDrive (See the "TeamDrive") sidebar). Another service, MyPlay (http://www.myplay.com), is designed for storing multimedia files, such as QuickTime files and MP3s. Backup Services. Though it may not be obvious, a backup Web site differs from an online storage site in one major respect: It is meant for a complete data backup on a customized schedule, and it only lets you retrieve all the stored data in one big chunk. These services help you make sure your backup routines are done regularly and the files are stored safely. @Backup. Download and install the @Backup utility on a Windows system and you're ready to do a major backup. This utility lets you pick specific folders and files to include, or you can right-click a file to add it to the regularly scheduled upload using a pop-up menu. The 30-day free trial lets you back up 50MB or less; after that you will pay $49.95 per year and up based on the amount of space you need. A CD-ROM version of all you data (up to 650MB) is available for $49.95 including shipping. http://www.atbackup.com Connected Online Backup. The software behind this service is called Connected TLM, and it's geared toward businesses needing to back up massive amounts of computer data. Support for individual users is found on the Connected FAQ page (http://www.connected.com/support/faqs), which includes details telling you where to find the software for your Windows PC. The 30-day trial covers one of two plans: $6.95 per month for 100MB (the software will default to backing up what's in your My Documents folder) or $14.95 per month for up to 4GB (this version backs up just about all the data files on your local hard drives unless you say otherwise). Regular incremental backups ensure the archive stays complete. http://www.connected.com Get More Space. As you can see, storing your files online is an easy process. The difficult part is choosing a service to use. Take a look at the services we explored, try a few out, and start saving and sharing files online.  by Bonny L. Georgia
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