Nine Free Cloud Backup Services
By Bob Rankin
All of the best-known cloud backup and storage services give you a free taste of a few gigabytes, but most users want more and that can cost money. However, there are a few lesser-known cloud storage services that offer very generous or even unlimited space, subject to a few rules. Read on to learn how you can get over 150 GB of free online storage that you can access without ever whipping out your credit card…
Free Cloud Storage Options
Cloud storage is simply another name for online file storage. Keeping backups or working copies of important files in the cloud, instead of your hard drive, can give you peace of mind, as well as more convenient access to your files when you need them. As long as you have a computer (or in many cases even a mobile device) with internet access, you can access, edit, and share your files using cloud services. And if it’s free, that’s even better!
In an earlier article, I compared three of the most popular cloud storage providers: Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. They’re all excellent, secure cloud services, and they all offer some amount of free online storage, but not really enough to write home about. Even if you combine SkyDrive’s 7 GB, Google’s 5GB, and the 2GB from Dropbox, that’s only 14 gigs of free cloud space.
Symform starts you off with 10 GB free of charge. If you want more online storage, you can earn it by sharing unused space on your local hard drive with Symform’s cloud storage network. For every 2 GB of local storage space you contribute, you earn 1 GB of of cloud storage for backups. There is no limit to the amount of free space you can earn.
Why pay two bytes for one? Because you get the security of off-site backup storage and the convenience of cloud storage. Most new computers come with a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) of hard drive space. I just checked my drive, and I’m using only about 100 GB. You probably have oodles of free space on your hard drive, so why not put it to some good use? Think of it as converting part of your hard drive’s unused space into cloud storage.
MediaFire starts you off with 50 GB of free storage space, enough for many users’ backup needs. Additional storage can be purchased, up to a maximum of 1 Terabyte per user. MediaFire also enables collaborative document sharing, image galleries, syncing with multiple devices, bulk downloads, and direct links to files that can be enclosed in emails.
Excerpt shared with permission from Bob Rankin.
