Back-ups / Free Online Storage

Here are some web sites for online back-ups and storage space. If you want to be or are a digital nomad, you will want to have back-ups of the stuff you do not want to lose. You never know what could happen and since everything on a computer could be lost, you need a way to recover all that data. There are many tips and tricks to do so.


First of all you should always have a partitioned hard drive. Your first partition is used for your software installation, the second used for your files, such has pictures, videos and anything else you want to keep safe in case of a system crash. Whatever is on the second partition will be safe if you would ever need to restore your whole system.


The second option is to have an external USB hard drive, just in case that the system crash is due to your hard-drive not working properly, in this case you might not be able to recover what's on the second partition. Having an external HD might just save your data. But what if something went really wrong and even that second HD would be also ruined. You want to have a third option, just in case. That is where online storage comes in handy.

There are many sites for online storage for free, but honestly most of them are way too small amounts of space for most of us these days. Many will offer 1GB or less, which is absolutely not enough for me. I have so many pictures I would need too many of these accounts to actually do a complete back-up. Many will offer up to 2GB which is better but still not enough. Here are a few sites that offer 2GB of space if that is enough for your needs:
- binfire.com (File size limit is : 200Mb)
- http://www.dropbox.com/
- mozy.com
- http://www.myotherdrive.com/
- goaruna.com (File size limit is : 100Mb)


Others will offer 5GB :
- http://www.opendrive.com/ (File size limit is : 100Mb)
- idrive.com (they will also offer an extra 10GB of free space by referring contacts)


Here comes the best part. Some offer much more free online storage space.


- http://www.skydrive.com/ (Which is part of Windows Live offers a free 25GB of storage, so if you have two hotmail accounts you will be getting 50GB for free. There is one downside to to SkyDrive it is limited to 50Mb file size)


- http://www.adrive.com/ (Offers you 50GB of free online storage. They also do not limit the number of accounts per IP address, which means that if you and your parents or roommates want accounts you can all have one. File Size limit is also interesting because it is at a maximum of 2GB)


- http://www.mediafire.com/ (Unlimited Storage Space, Unlimited Upload and download. Max file size : 200Mb)


I have also found a pretty neat site for backups and storage :
- http://www.crashplan.com/ (For 50.00 USD a year you can get unlimited storage space with unlimited file size maximum, which is very good if you plan on making back-ups of videos that often exceed 1 or 2GB)


So here it is, hope this might help you choosing from the many different services offered. I have done extensive research over the last few days to find something that suits me best. For now Mediafire, SkyDrive and Adrive are the best for me, but for my bigger video files, they will need to be backed up elsewhere, or I can always split the files not to exceed the allowed limits.