Wednesday, 7 November 2012

How To Best Utilize The Advantages And Benefits Of Cloud Storage

By Caitlin Smith


Discussions regarding the cloud and its potential are everywhere these days. Even though cloud storage has existed for years, it didn't really gain traction with a mainstream market until Apple's introduction of iCloud in 2011.

Today it seems like everyone has the same questions, ranging from how cloud storage works to how they could use it. If this sounds like you, read on to learn all you have to know.

In a standard setup, an onboard unit can be used to assist in storage needs. In a laptop this can be a built-in hard drive as well as flash memory, on a mobile handset it could be a memory card. The issue with these storage formats is that you need to have them with you so that you can have access to your content. Whether this means bringing a computer on a trip or even lugging a USB drive around, you have to have the moderate in your presence if you wish to access your files.

Obviously, this is a major problem for people who make use of multiple devices. This is the issue that cloud storage looks to solve as we move in the direction of a world where by our smartphones, tablets and computers need to share much of our data. In a cloud storage setup, information isn't saved locally. It's uploaded to a remote server instead, and can then be accessed by almost any of a person's devices. People that use cloud will no longer be at the mercy of the perils of losing a USB drive before a presentation or perhaps spending hours uploading music between devices. If there's a network internet connection, cloud users can easily access their data considerably like an online back up.

Another benefit of cloud storage is it creates a backup for your files. Hard drive breakdowns used to mean the loss of gigabytes of data that may or may not be recoverable. Using cloud storage, you are able to actively maintain backups of your data to make sure that a hard drive failure only necessitates a simple restore.

If all of this sounds amazing, that's because it is. If you're thinking about changing to cloud storage, you'll want to know the numerous providers. As with any product, you will find a variety of major providers within the industry. Let's have a look at a few of the largest providers, along with what advantages or downsides that come with each one.

Apple's iCloud is one service that was mentioned above. If you own any Apple products, including an iPhone or MacBook, then you've got 5GB of iCloud storage free of charge. Additional storage can be obtained at yearly rates of $20 for 10GB, $40 for 20GB and then $100 for 50GB. The major disadvantage of iCloud, though, is the fact it's only compatible with Apple's items. You can't manage files one by one, so files such as Excel spreadsheets are left out in the dark.




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