Skydrive - 5 gigs for saving your data

I just received a mail from the Messenger team, talking about skydrive. Seems very interesting, it's supposed to be a krypted area where you store important things (a copy of your passport before traveling, who knows). It's a great idea having copy of your important things. And, of course, 5 gigs storage is always someting interesting. Have a look, it's here : http://skydrive.live.com

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Looks to me like any other free online storage solution. Haven't found anything really interesting to me. It's just another Microsoft's "we got to stick ourselves in here" type of deal.

xboxrulz

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The only reason to use this is that you are already registered.

It's not bad, in IE the activex object can be really clever and fast.

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I don't see much, or really anything significant that is different from other free online file hosts/backup places. The only reason one may want to use this is because most people have an MSN account (or windows live account, whatever it is called now). Aside from that, whilst 5 gigabytes of storage space is quite good, I don't like these online file hosting sites because they are slow and using a more traditinal method, such as burning files to a CD or DVD is easier, quicker, and less hasslesome.

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Well I think it is a good idea... Pretty smart, too. But I would just be concerned with having really important files being kept in something like an MSN product. Not that it is terrible being MSN, but that it is known for fun messaging programs, and this is like security issued programming.

Of course, I think I may give it a try so that I can use it as a temporary storage site, but probably not anything really important with vital information involved. But I do like not having to send over disks, CDs, flashdrives and whatnot all of the time, and have the Internet up and running from laptop to desktop.

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I see two major reasons.
the first one is the amount of space. 5 gigs is a big storage.
The second one is that this space is yours, and remains yours as long as you keep your account alive.
Most of other free online storage remove the hosted files, usually if they have not had enough downloads, or even after some inactivity time, or simply without reason. On skydrive there is no time-limit clause.
And they claim that traffic to your site is krypted, so it's difficult to steal your data.
And of course, a copy of your passport can be interesting for you if you loose your passport in a foreign country and will help you obtain a new one. It has no interest for somebody else. I see a lot of cases (my current report for my boss) where some info should not be lost, and being read by somebody else does not matter.

 

 

 

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I used to use Windows Live Skydrive as storage space and backup some of my important documents and bookmarks / favourites. However, I stopped using it when I joined the Live Mesh Technical Preview (run by Microsoft) which I have setup to automatically synchronise my files (including documents and Onenote notebooks) to the online Live Desktop, where the files are stored online on Microsoft servers. At the current time, you can only sync folder and files between the Live Desktop and a PC running Windows XP or Vista, but development is carried out to allow synchronisation between the Live Desktop, mobile devices and Macs.

I have found this Live Mesh service to be a free and effective way of backing my files automatically online, without need for user interaction i.e. the Live Mesh service automatically runs in the background and synchronises the files when changes are made. I use it to supplement the automatic Norton Ghost backups to my secondary hard disk.

More information:
http://www.mesh.com/

Note: I am not sure whether you can get into the technical preview at the current time, but try anyway by clicking the link at the bottom "Get an early look for developers".

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My wife is away from our home, and it is nice to be able to send her a lot of things online. She has our laptop, and we send each other a lot of things. I have sent her stuff that were financial, and scanned documents. She has our digital camera, so she sends us digital photos online. I like that we don't have to send multiple emails with a few files here and there.

So I am probably not going to use it on a daily basis, and it seems like if I need to send someone large files, then I will be continually using it. But I do like it, and as always, its nice to see more freeware and online services...

- skedad -

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I doubt it beats GMail Drive, that's probably the only reason I might get a gmail account.

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It's legit, and it needs nothing installed on your PC.
Gmail Drive is not legit, nor supported by google, and it needs to be installed on your PC.

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