Thanks to family, I take a lot of photos and video. My smartphone has become my camera of choice these days, and has been for several years now, and with that I’ve gradually focused on buying devices that have more built-in storage. I’ve shied away from microSD cards over the years, as I’ve just kept what I can on my device of choice, and putting the rest up in the cloud.
I’ve been using cloud services for so long now, as basically my go-to option for storing just about everything I can, that it’s just second nature. I expect my photos, videos, documents, and even my music to be available to me whenever I want it to be — as long as I’m connected to a network, of course. Which, thankfully, is more often than not.
The adoption of more devices makes the cloud even more important. I use my laptop more often than any other device, but when I switch over to my tablet I like being able to pull up what I was working on, if that’s applicable to the situation, and just keep going without having to worry about transferring anything over. Being able to find my pictures and videos captured by my phone on my computer without having to plug it in and sync everything over is fantastic.
The cloud makes it easy, and easy is good.
And there are a ton of options out there, covering a variety of needs in one service and platform. Apple has its iCloud platform, Microsoft with its own OneDrive, and Google Drive for folks who prefer that route. And then there’s Amazon, and plenty others, all offering their own versions of perks to sway customers into their cloud.
Despite the fact that I’ve never had an issue with cloud storage — never lost any files, or been denied access, or anything like that — I still have the mindset that something could go wrong, and so I have a backup. And then I have a backup of that backup. But not physically, not on an external drive, but in another cloud service. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but it’s just how I’ve been doing it for years. So right now I have three cloud storage options being used every single day.
iCloud, OneDrive, and Google Drive. Each of these are mainly used for photos and videos, which typically take up the most storage. I’ve got music adding to the mix in OneDrive, and iCloud — by way of iTunes — has more than a few movies up there waiting for me whenever I want to watch them again. For the most part, though, iCloud just makes it easier for me to keep writing from one machine to the next.
It’s probably also worth noting that iCloud and OneDrive seem more utilitarian to me, simply existing to keep things safe and at-hand when I want them. However, I use Google Photos and Drive for the features tied in. Google Photos is pretty fantastic, and while iOS 10 might make me shy away from those features, I’ll probably still use it anyway — just in case.
But thinking about it got me wondering if you prefer another cloud storage option, and if so which one and why are you using it, compared to the other options out there? Do you use more than one like me? Or are you someone who only uses cloud storage at a basic level, and still prefers to have a physical backup? Let me know!
