The Who, What, When, Where, and How of Cloud Storage

WHO has the best free cloud storage?

My favorites are: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, & Google Photos.
  I personally find one drive and the amazon cloud annoying - but they are also good options

All of these offer programs for on your computer, your phone, and web based access.  All of them offer free storage, and all of them make sharing your files, or keeping them private, easy.

WHAT to store in Cloud Storage
No storage is fool proof.  I keep an external hard drive, and various cloud storage, and I try to keep things backed up both places.  Both can fail - external hard drives can go back, clouds can go out of business (Copy was a favorite of mine that no longer exists.. but I had plenty of time to get my files out before they closed)

Genealogy - folders for each family surname, with subfolders for family members, containg documents and photos and everything related to genealogy research!

Documents - The Christmas card list, pets vet records, the kids high school transcripts  The family recipes, files for cookbooks I compiled, copies of insurance cards, household inventory, copies of important documents - like insurance policies and diplomas.  God forbid the house ever burns down, but if it does, all of our important documents would still be accessible.  I created a folder for each of the children and scanned in newspaper articles, and awards, for each of them. 


Crafts - Cricut svg files & fonts.  Patterns.  Photos of your completed projects.  I keep all of my favorite fonts in a folder in dropbox so that when I get a new device, I can transfer them quickly.  

Digital Media - less and less common.  We used to need a place to back up our mp3 files, now we all use spotify.  A place to back up ebooks, but many have gone to Overdrive (borrow ebooks for free from your library!) and or kindle.  

Photos!  

WHERE To Store Your Cloud Files:

Dropbox - 2gb free
   I probably joined dropbox when they first started, which may explain why I have 30gb of free storage.  There are lots of ways to get more free storage - one as simple as completing their getting started guide.  

For those of you looking to back up svgs for cricut, just for reference, the 2,000 svg files (unzipped - I unzip them and delete all of the extras that come in most zip files) I have stored take up roughly 200mb.  2gb will hold  a LOT of svgs.

Dropbox is my go to favorite for moving files from my phone to my laptop, and vice versa.  I have the app on my phone, and the program on my laptop.  Although I can access the files from any web browser, the apps make it quicker for me.  I created a folder named "Transfer" and when I there is something I know I will want on the other device, I send it there.  Once every week or so I try to make sure that folder is cleaned out and the files are where I wanted them.

Google Drive - 15gb free
Google Drive offers an impressive 15gb for free.  I tend to think of google drive as document storage, but I know others use it for svg storage quite effectively.  

I've never loved the web format of this storage, it just always looks cluttered.  But the new desktop download works just like the basic windows folder system, and will automatically sync and back up whichever folders you assign to do so.

When the kids were homeschooled, this was my favorite.  The kids could save their assignments to google drive, and when I edited them, it would show where I made edits.  If we were working on the same document at the same time, we could each see what the other was doing in real time - really a great feature for collaborative documents!

Box.com - 10gb free
When Box first started, they were giving away 50gb free to entice everyone to sign up.
Box drive as a downloadable program is in beta - I've never used it, I simply open a browser.  It's great for collaboration, with easy access to writing notes and adding comments to files.

Google Photos - Unlimited, mostly
"Google Photo gives you unlimited storage space if you are willing to limit photo resolution to 16 megapixels and video resolution to 1080p. You do have the option to store at higher resolutions, but the storage counts against your Google Drive quota"

This is the best way to back up all of those photos on your cell phone! 

HOW To Back Up Your Files In Cloud Storage

First decide what you are backing up, and where you are backing it up to.  Then organize it a bit if needed - sort those svg files into folders by theme, gather all of your documents in a folder and name them appropriately, and create your free storage account.

Then go to the services website, download the program.  On your phone, download the app.  Figure out if you need to upload your files, or just sync the folders.  

Each program is a little different, but all of them are really good at walking you through the steps, and they all have tutorials if you need them.

Think of it as moving things to a flash drive, except the flash drive is the cloud. 

Then, back everything up on a flash drive (or external hard drive, or even dvds) too, to cover as many bases as you can.  


WHEN to Back Up Your Files On Cloud Storage
Frequently.  Set a time each week, or each month, to update and back up your files.  Once a year plan to spend some time cleaning up your cloud storage.  Years ago we used to have filing cabinets that needed cleaned out and organized every once in awhile, think of your cloud storage as a filing cabinet.  

For me, this is somewhat easy. I am on wifi once a week (we have limited wifi at the farm).  So the night before, I try to sort out the photos on my camera roll (I do not need to back up all 37 photos I took  of our llama yesterday afternoon - I can pick the best 4), add new songs to my spotify playlist, make a note of books I want to add to my phone to read, etc.  Then when I am on wifi the next day, I have a folder on my phone labeled "when on wifi".  I open each of those apps, and back up and upload as necessary.

Each week I try to clean out the downloads folder on my laptop - moving all of the genealogy, photos, and svg downloads to the appropriate folders and storage, before it all gets too out of control.  How often will truly depend on your own habits, and on how many files and folders you accumulate in a week.