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Cloud Storage: Five Alternatives Compared

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On April 26, 2012, 11:27 PM

It's cloud storage week apparently, with Dropbox rolling out an update that improves how its users can share things, Microsoft's SkyDrive getting dedicated desktop apps and a revamped feature set, and Google Drive finally making its long-awaited debut. The market suddenly got much more competitive.

Although there are many more options out there, some serving specific niches, we've hand-picked some of the most established and consumer-friendly cloud storage services and took them for a spin to see how well they stack against each other. We've included a comparative table for an at-a-glance overview of each service's strong points, while a more detailed description should give you a better idea of which one fits your needs.

Read the complete article.

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User Comments: 31

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  1. You guys seem to forget that there is also a Live Mesh app in addition to SkyDrive, that focuses on syncing selected folders between your PC's (that also does LAN syncing when available) so you can select SkyDrive folder for syncing in Mesh if you need to bypass internet-only sync.

    So this extends feature list quite a bit (although Mesh is not SkyDrive, but can be combined with it and uses same account) while providing with alternative to online-only backup. For example my work and art projects folders are way too big to sync over cloud, so I backup my data by automatically duplicating on all my PC's. For other purposes Dropbox and Skydrive work the best (I use both for different needs).

  2. Strange no one mentioned the CrashPlan it is superior in prise/performance to everything including DropBox, SkyDrive, etc. Just check their site. And their seeding is very convenient too: they send you their own 1 TB HD for that.

  3. Too bad it will only sync certain file types. (Drop a .7z file in there and watch it go nowhere.)

    Not sure how you got to this conclusion as I have several .7z files uploaded.

  4. I've been using CX.com for awhile now in addition to Dropbox. My shared folders in Dropbox are automatic and all the people who share files with me have Dropbox on their machines, so the hassle factor of changing would be extreme, especially since even with us all sharing video clips and pics and such, I'm rarely over 2GB of the 5GB available.

    For backing up my work files I've been using CX.com - it syncs multiple folders automatically and is as painless to use as Dropbox in most respects. Unfortunately, the sync service is giving me some headaches right now - some of my key files (luckily also backed up in Dropbox) stopped syncing some time ago, I just discovered. I've updated to the most recent client for Windows and hope that fixes the problem, since I'm using over half the available 10GB for large DOC files plus my ebook collection and would hate to shift all that over to a more restricted service like SkyDrive.

    I like CX.com a lot and REALLY hope the software update makes it sync again.

  5. to add to Cubby's features...... encryption.

  6. Thanks again for reminding me to backup my school work, I went with Google Drive. I'm loving cloud storage.

  7. With plenty of cloud services available today, people need to evaluate and analyse their needs carefully and choose the one that best suits them. I have been using Dropbox and completely satisfied with it, also giving a try to Google Drive but I think Dropbox would fit my personal cloud needs. On the other hand, we use SyncBlaze officially which does the same thing as dropbox and lots more, its perfect for business purposes.

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