What you think of Dropbox, Gladinet etc. (cloud storage)

[Ivo]

Skydrive might give me what I want Gladinet did not (or I just did not see the options).

I want it so I can mount it as a harddrive on some computers, and access it as a webbased ftp site on all computers. ie On my home desktop I have it as Drive Z, at my parents house I can just log into it, and while I am on vacation I can access it as Drive Z on my laptop.

Did that make more sense?

While Gladinet offers a paid option with storage provided by themselves, the free version enables you to mount as virtual drives many other "3rd party" providers. Skydrive from Microsoft is in the list. It is easy to configure, you will need of course to put your Windows Live ID and password (you can just create a new account just for that if you prefer).

If you install Gladinet free on every computer you mentioned you can mount the virtual drive there. Alternatively you can use the easy "drag and drop" on your PC and laptop and just use the annoying Skydrive Java everywhere else so you don't need to install Gladinet or leave your password there.

Right now I have a virtual drive mounted with my music backups and some documents. I didn't want to upload my pictures yet. Mind you, it took a bunch of hours to upload the stuff I did and theres like 5 GB or so, but that is your upload speed limiting the transfer, unlike a local drive.

Ivo.

[Ivo]

I've found a very user-friendly one that works for syncing across different PCs - Dropbox. I've been using it now. It's not quite the same thing as what Gladinet+Skydrive provide, but I use it more frequently.

[Jungell]

I'm a Dropbox user, I love it. Couldn't do without it! It has rendered my USB memorysticks completely useless! The best thing about it is that it's for the Mac, Linux and Windows.

[Niode]

Personally I just use dropbox for a simple way of hosting images. It's a damn site faster and easier than using Imageshack.us or Photobucket etc. Just copy it to the public dropbox folder and the right click -> dropbox -> get public url. Easy peasy.

I also use it for backing/syncing up my Saves between Steam for Mac and Steam on my PC.

Dropbox etc has a lot of uses that don't infringe on your privacy and I'm glad that these particular solutions exist.

[TheNetEffect]

I've tried Gladinet with SkyDrive, it was a little flaky for me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I also wanted reliable Google Docs access. I also wanted to get to both of these from my iPhone.

I eventually found a service called SMEStorage that enabled me to access my Google Docs and SkyDrive files from my windows machine at work (you only get the virtual drive and sync tools with the paid version and can mount up to 10 different, or the same, clouds) and a virtual drive for my Linux machine at home. They also have an iPhone App called iSMEStorage which is really nice and works well for me. I'm currently using a beta build of their Blackberry App for my work phone and even though it is beta it works well, enabling me to manage/access files from my work Blackberry and sync SkyDrive and GDocs files a little like Dropbox does.

It takes a little work to get it setup, and the concept is different from other services I have come across as it seems the provide some sort of gateway in which they keep the information about your files in sync, so remember to setup an hourly sync, but once its all setup it works well and I've found it very stable.

[chupon]

I use Crashplan. I'd highly recommend it. Very simple. Pretty cheap. Very reliable.

[Ivo]

I'm reviving this thread because things are moving relatively fast.

The Windows Live suite has something called Live Mesh which seems pretty interesting right now.

Also I've read about SugarSync and it seems very interesting as well.

Anyone tried either of those solutions? Your thoughts?

I've been REALLY happy with Dropbox so far, but it has several limitations - the free version is only 2GB (granted you could get up to 8GB if you refer people and they join), and most important you can not mark folders "outside" the Dropbox folder as shared to be synchronized (I think they are working on this).

Ivo.

[AppleQueso]

I absolutely love dropbox. I use it for pretty much everything I need to upload or link people, be it images or small files.

[Ivo]

I absolutely love dropbox. I use it for pretty much everything I need to upload or link people, be it images or small files.

Dropbox is amazing. It just works. But the free part of it is on the small size (basically 2.25 GB without work, as you just need to be invited by someone to get the extra .25 GB).

I really would appreciate syncing of any folder I desired. I read somewhere they are working on that but maybe it was wishful thinking.

Also would be nice to select what to sync and what not to sync between your accounts on the same computer (although this is easy to work around by creating multiple accounts, it is still extra hassle).

It seemed to me that SugarSync had 5GB for free and it had those features I would like Dropbox to have. I just have to wonder if it also "just works", like Dropbox (although I already noticed it does not have a Linux client).

Ivo.

[eskil]

Been using Dropbox for ages now, it's made my life much easier.