A Stumble Between Cloud Drive

What exactly is a cloud drive? in my opinion - It’s a virtual disk drive placed on a wide network or internet. In other words, there’s no necessity to carry up a USB drive anymore, but everywhere you need is an internet connection. I can say that cloud drive is a small part of cloud computing or any kind of this. I thought it was departed from FTP link mechanism, while you need your own domain to get it start. But with cloud drive, everything looks more portable now.

There are 2 big players on cloud drive; Google (GDrive) and Microsoft (SkyDrive). While Google integrating it with Google Mail (GMail), Microsoft combined it with Microsoft Live. It’s a different, but similar. Okay anyone know that Gmail has 8GB storage to archives email on each account, it’s a more than enough to save 2 DVD drives on that way. Since it takes lot of time to use up the spaces, this probably boiled down as a new Google product inherited.



Officially – AFAIK - Google has integrated GDrive into Windows shell by a small kit named Gmail Drive (click the link to get it), while others OS supported by each hardware vendors (such Acer Aspire One for their netbook products which came with Linux) or with Firefox add-ons which is support multi-platform. Anyway - after installing it - your Windows Explorer now enhanced with supplement folder named with Gmail Drive. As it has the same behavior as disk drive, this Gmail Drive also has properties window. Just point to it, right click & select properties. See, it has the same size with your Gmail space.



By the way you can do above way after you have an internet link. Further, try to go into the drive, click the Gmail Drive & it’ll appear a login window. Enter your account, and then verification window will show, just like picture below.



To take example, try to copy & paste a file or folder. After it copied, the drive will send an email alert inform you that you or someone using your account had store a thing(s) on GDrive. Now, how about SkyDrive? It’s resemble with GDrive (with extra drive additional & extra space!), but the software kit was develop from 3rd party (not officially from Microsoft).



You can try to download the kit named by SDExplorer from this link. Install it (an extra drive will available named with SDExplorer) & try to log on with your Windows Live ID (create one if you doesn’t have).



Login to it & - as I say - you’ll have an extra 25GB drive space! Is any provider can supply more than this? However, this SkyDrive has the same operation treatment as GDrive, as it simply as copy, cut or paste.

Conclusion
From example on this article, no need to spare money to buy an extra USB disk, since you’ll have additional 33GB for free on the net accessed precisely from your Windows Explorer.



Those “virtual” drive above hit a bit benefit on me, it’s a secondary storage to store my micro files (like configuration files or something else) just in case if you forget to carry your USB disk. While it contains micro files, it doesn’t take long time to download it from the cloud drive. Share your comment below, thanks for reading & good day.

Labels: , , , , , ,

  Post a Comment