Cloud Syncing/Storage Options

One of the problems I had very early on with my smartphones was issues with the microSD card.  It was like I was cursed to have bad sectors.  More than once I had lost many pictures that I hadn’t backed up.  I swore to myself I wouldn’t let that happen again – especially as my 3 year old is doing some pretty darn cute things.

Now I’m still pretty much guilty for not having a fail-safe method yet, but I try to stay on top of things for the more important photos.  But there’s just so many options, and I’m not sure which is the best, so I set out to try a few this week.

PC-Desktop via USB

Okay, now this seemed redundant, but I figured I had to start with the obvious.  Plugging in my phone via USB, or even having to get the SD card out seems pretty archaic these days.  But it’s probably the best way to physically get things done.  I have Galaxy S, which means that it uses Kies as a desktop program, but I don’t use it for that at all – only for firmware updates, should they ever come.  But it does allow me to view the phone’s contents if I go to drive L (or whatever it happens to be).  This would involve plugging it in, choosing the right USB method, opening the folder and choosing the right sub folder (and in my case there’s the card and the phone, each with photos and videos to save).  This works when I want to upload some files, but often I use an alternate method (see below).  I’m sure there’s some sort of script that could be written to automate this process, but as geek as I am, I’m not that much unfortunately.  The other issue comes from the fact that my Galaxy S suffers from the post froyo condition of not being able to use it in Mass Storage mode (I have to put it in Media Player or Firmware to get all 16GB availability – and then it’s god awful slow).

Dropbox

I’ve only recently started to use Dropbox, and haven’t quite got the hang of it, except I know that it’s got a great feature to upload a bunch of folders in my Gallery, and it’ll know that some are already there.  What would be a great feature would be for me to set which for Dropbox to monitor and automatically upload the photos.  But, I’d hope that there’d be an option to only do so when on WiFi (as I tend to take pictures where there isn’t, and I wouldn’t want it to upload a ton on my dataplan).  Overall, against the others it’s the one I’m liking the most.  Being able to set up a shared link for the folder or file is a great feature to have on the phone.   One thing is that I can’t get is why I can’t delete a folder in dropbox, yet I can delete a file.

SugarSync

I’ve only learned of this program myself.  Apparently I’m not as well ‘connected’ as thought.  So I’ve given it a bit of a try.  I’ve only had it a couple of days now, so I haven’t really figured it all out, but it seems to have an automated feature for uploading and backing up.  It’s got a lot of ‘eye candy’ in how it operates, versus the barebones look of Dropbox, and that tends to drive me away from software.  The more ‘flashy’ it is, the less I expect from it feature wise.  But I feel like I could be wrong on this account.

Wuala

Now this I’ve heard of before, as a couple of companies had sent me their larger preview files (videos, graphic designs, etc…) via the web version.  I hadn’t ever created my own account tho’.  But just yesterday I found out “there’s an app for that” (ooh, I can hear the apple lawyers firing up their pens over that).  So I created myself an account.  I was never fond of the ‘remote access’ on the web for wuala (plus it never worked for chrome), and I’m not liking the app interface either.  Nor can I find an option to ‘share’ a file via Wuala, so everything would have to be done in the app itself, just seems a little redundant to take a photo, look at it, then load Wuala, which’ll load the gallery again to select which photo.  I’m doubting I’m going to keep this, but I’ll keep at it and give it an honest effort.  The major downside to this is the interface is not all that pleasant (the web version is horrible) and all that aside – you only get 1GB

Docs

If you know me, you know my thoughts on all things Google.  I did a recent review of the app, so I won’t repeat myself here.  I think that this is the clear winner, and has the potential to be entirely the best option by far.

Overall

The biggest need I have to is that there is a seemlessness (yes, I made this word up) when working with non-smartphone version.  There shouldn’t be major changes or differences between the app on the phone and the other devices I’ll use it on (my ubuntu netbook, my office pc or a friend’s mac).  I started this article stating how for me the importance was being able to back up my important photos, and I want to ensure that I can get to those as easily as possible.

Cloud ‘computing’ is something that I’ve grown quite fond of over the years and had adopted quite early on using the Google Docs.  Wish I could convert my office to Apps, but it’s not for me to decide.  But sure would be neat.  I think that the appearance of all these cloud storage/syncing options is a great start to where we’ll be heading with the new style of computing.

Storage Option Free Space
Premium Storage Cost
per year

Dropbox

2GB

$100 for 50GB 

SugarSync

5GB – limit of 25MB file size

$50 for 30GB

Wuala

1GB

$30 for 10GB

Google

7.5GB

$5 for 20GB

Okay, I know these aren’t the only ones, so here’s some other options to consider:

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