Free Online Storage.

No aspect in technology has gone down so badly in monetary value as storage has. Storage space, which was once premium, is now mundane. 250GB hard disks have become the norm in laptops. External hard disks have become commonplace. Zip drives tread a similar path. But, as I keep referring to often, cloud computing is the next big thing and is fast catching up. There are many websites that offer free online storage; the maximum storage I have come across is 50 GB in A Drive. And all of them are ad-supported.

I found online storage immensely helpful, especially at work or when I am on a vacation. I seldom use Hotmail (and Live) services but found SkyDrive to be the second most useful application from Microsoft's stable (after, ofcourse, Windows). It offers 25 GB of free online storage space. This is pretty handy. Some good online storage sites include:

A Drive: It offers 50 GB of free space for Basic users. It also offers paid services that have more storage and more sharing capabilities but if you plan to use online storage for personal purposes, Basic plan will suffice. Ofcoure, you would have to bear the advertisements along the margins of the application. Who cares? There are no 'sharing' features in A Drive. Max file upload is 2 GB, which is the best I've come across. Check out the screenshot here.

SkyDrive: Microsoft's SkyDrive is very handy and is cosmetically superior to A Drive or for that matter, any other online storage interface. It builds on the already existing 'Live' brand. It offers a good 'sharing' feature on top of an excellent interface. Downside is that the max upload limit is 50 MB, which sucks. Screenshot.

4Shared: I like 4Shared the best because of its strong online presence. There is a lot of interaction going on and one can easily find good study material, songs, research papers that are available for download. You can also create an account and get 5 GB free online storage. And this private online storage interface is similar to that of A Drive. Max upload limit is 100 MB. And like with Google Docs, lets you share URLs of the files you upload. Screenshot.

Dropbox: Dropbox goes a step ahead and lets you sync your files across multiple computers. Downside is that you get only 2 GB of free space and syncing of big files (> 500MB) does take significant time. But, you can access this storage as an extended drive on your hard disk.

Zumodrive: I personally did not feel it is worth the effort I put in to install it. Installation was very easy. So, imagine how worthy it should have been to me. It is similar to Dropbox, with an added functionality; iPhone access. But for 1 GB additional space, I would not really go the stretch.

So, the next time you plan to go on a vacation or if you need to have a backup you know where to head to.