Dear Lifehacker,
Anytime I see an offer for free cloud storage, I'm all over it. I have over 8GB of Dropbox space, 5GB on Google Drive, 20GB on Amazon Cloud Drive, 50GB on Box, and 7GB on Microsoft's SkyDrive—and I want to take advantage of all of it. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Drowning in Free Space
Dear Drowning,
We hear you! With all the cloud services handing out free space like
it's candy, it's easy to end up with a lot of unused space just waiting
to be filled. Unfortunately, there's no way to consolidate all that
storage space spread out across your accounts (though you can use
services like previously mentioned Otixo and Primadesk
to see all your online drives at once). One way to make use of all of
these services without too much confusion is to separate the types of
files you store across services, and in fact, you can do so in a way
that takes advantage of the strengths of each.
For example, you can dedicate Dropbox to your active projects, because it's the syncing service where you have the most storage space. Use other services for backing up your photos, music, and other data.
These services all have unique strengths that can help you decide what to use them for. You don't need to use every single one of these services, but if you want to mix and match, here's an overview of what they're best for:
Best Uses for Different Cloud Services
Sync Your Music with Amazon Cloud Drive or Google Play Music
Neither Amazon Cloud Drive nor Google Play Music sync your files, so they're not useful for storing stuff that needs to always be up-to-date. They are, however, ideal for your music files.
If you buy your MP3s from Amazon, they're automatically stored to your Amazon Cloud Drive and don't count against your storage space. Even better, if you're on a paid plan (starting at $20/year for 20GB), you get unlimited storage space for all music, regardless of where you bought it. Amazon can stream your music on the web and on Android and iOS devices.
Google Play Music now incorporates the former Google Music service into Google's Play marketplace to store your songs—and books—online and stream them on the web and your Android phone. Play's limit for music is 20,000 songs, rather than a set amount of space in gigabytes. (You get unlimited space for ebooks and can use Play to rent movies but not store them in the cloud). Plus, Adam Pash's Music Plus Chrome extension makes Play Music even more awesome.
Learn more about the differences between Google Play Music and Amazon Cloud Drive in our cloud music comparison, which also includes iCloud. It's also worth noting that SugarSync can stream a folder of music to iOS and Android, and gives you 5GB of free space.
by Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker | Read more:
Anytime I see an offer for free cloud storage, I'm all over it. I have over 8GB of Dropbox space, 5GB on Google Drive, 20GB on Amazon Cloud Drive, 50GB on Box, and 7GB on Microsoft's SkyDrive—and I want to take advantage of all of it. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Drowning in Free Space
Dear Drowning,
We hear you! With all the cloud services handing out free space like
it's candy, it's easy to end up with a lot of unused space just waiting
to be filled. Unfortunately, there's no way to consolidate all that
storage space spread out across your accounts (though you can use
services like previously mentioned Otixo and Primadesk
to see all your online drives at once). One way to make use of all of
these services without too much confusion is to separate the types of
files you store across services, and in fact, you can do so in a way
that takes advantage of the strengths of each.For example, you can dedicate Dropbox to your active projects, because it's the syncing service where you have the most storage space. Use other services for backing up your photos, music, and other data.
These services all have unique strengths that can help you decide what to use them for. You don't need to use every single one of these services, but if you want to mix and match, here's an overview of what they're best for:
Best Uses for Different Cloud Services
Sync Your Music with Amazon Cloud Drive or Google Play Music
Neither Amazon Cloud Drive nor Google Play Music sync your files, so they're not useful for storing stuff that needs to always be up-to-date. They are, however, ideal for your music files.
If you buy your MP3s from Amazon, they're automatically stored to your Amazon Cloud Drive and don't count against your storage space. Even better, if you're on a paid plan (starting at $20/year for 20GB), you get unlimited storage space for all music, regardless of where you bought it. Amazon can stream your music on the web and on Android and iOS devices.
Google Play Music now incorporates the former Google Music service into Google's Play marketplace to store your songs—and books—online and stream them on the web and your Android phone. Play's limit for music is 20,000 songs, rather than a set amount of space in gigabytes. (You get unlimited space for ebooks and can use Play to rent movies but not store them in the cloud). Plus, Adam Pash's Music Plus Chrome extension makes Play Music even more awesome.
Learn more about the differences between Google Play Music and Amazon Cloud Drive in our cloud music comparison, which also includes iCloud. It's also worth noting that SugarSync can stream a folder of music to iOS and Android, and gives you 5GB of free space.
by Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker | Read more:
