Technology and Making

A brief look at three of the most interesting players in the fast-growing world of online storage.

Google

Image via CrunchBase

The big word is, of course, "G-Drive". There have been rumours that Google would offer online file storage since before 2006, and it's consistent with their business model (they have publicly stated the intention to index every piece of data on the planet) and their capabilities.

There doesn't seem to be current figure on google's data storage capacity, but over two years ago their total stored data, not including Gmail, was estimated at over one petabyte - one thousand million megabytes. Considering Gmail has tens of millions of users and offers over seven gigabytes of storage to each one, that figure has clearly now increased astronomically.

The belief that Google will soon offer an online hard drive is further supported by a buried passage in a package sent out to their translators, and the fact that their Picasa and Gmail services now offer the option to buy more space (up to four hundred gigabytes), indicating that Google are establishing the infrastructure of a storage-for-hire service.

A Google Drive is an exciting possibility because it can be expected to share the qualities of their other services - it's likely to be free (at least for a basic service, which will probably provide greater benefits than their competitors), innovative, and it will interconnect at a high level with other Google offerings, which have become the backbone of many people's connected lives.


Amazon

Image via CrunchBase

Amazon launched their Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006, leveraging the huge server base they had established as the world's largest online retailer. S3 is not actually a consumer product - it doesn't have a user interface by which to upload and download data. Instead it is intended as a universal online storage solution which other companies can then use to create their own products - from data-heavy websites to user-friendly online hard drives - and many partners like Jungle Disk are now doing exactly that.

S3's most innovative characteristic is its fine-grained pricing model, which scales from (relatively) small to huge amounts of storage, and charges only for space and bandwidth (amount uploaded and downloaded) used rather than for the total space available. Prices currently start from fifteen cents a month per gigabyte stored, ten cents per gigabyte uploaded, and seventeen cents per gigabyte downloaded.


Dropbox

Image via CrunchBase

Dropbox has rapidly established itself as one of the most accessible and simple online disk drives, although in some ways it is really a backup and synchronisation tool rather than online storage. At installation time, a Dropbox folder is created or designated which is then synced in realtime with Dropbox's online space, any changes in the folder immediately mirrored (allowing for time to transfer data) in the online service. However, the files do remain on the user's computer, so this is not an option for moving ones data online to save hard disk space.

The most powerful aspects of Dropbox's service are the ability to create shortcuts in the Dropbox folder to files or folders elswhere, which are then also sychronised automatically, and the ability to install Dropbox across multiple systems. The Dropbox folders on each machine are then kept in sync (as long as they are online) providing access to one's files from any location. This is also one of the few online storage solutions to provide clients for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Labels: Amazon S3, Dropbox, File hosting service, Gmail, Google, Google Drive, jungle disk, online storage, Picasa, synchronisation

Image via Wikipedia

The lynchpin of cloud computing in the future will be the possibility of moving all your data online, making it accessible from any computer (or other networked device).

Online data storage has been around for years, of course. Even before the wide availability of the internet, Bulletin Board Systems provided file storage for their users, who would dial in using a phone line and a modem and upload files either for personal storage or, more commonly, to share them with other board users.

But until high-speed cable internet became widely available, the time taken to upload even a text file or a low-resolution picture to a BBS or website was considerable - and expensive, given that most users were paying by the minute for the phone call. Now a large proportion of home and office computer users have a high-speed, always-on internet connection, online file storage is becoming a real and practical solution, and hundreds of companies are springing up to offer different implementations and grab some of the action.

It's important to put "high speed" in context, of course - most internet connections sold to home users and smaller businesses are ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines - and the Asymmetric part means "Your upload rate will suck".

For example, Virgin Media's 10Mb broadband internet gives only a 512Kb upload rate, which means the average three megabyte MP3 will take about a minute to upload at full speed, and a movie will take over three hours. If you have a lot of digital media or just large quantities of data (and consider that an entry-level hard drive right now is around 160Gb - one hundred and sixty thousand megabytes), transferring it all online can take weeks of continuous uploading.

I'll address accessibility and security in a later segment, as these apply to all cloud computing services, and I'm not going to try to compare or recommend specific online storage options - this is a market which is growing exponentially, with new contenders springing up every day, and identifying the best is a fulltime job. I'd suggest you look at the frequently-updated reviews on sites like Epinions.com and TopTenReviews for advice on the best service to pick for your needs.

Instead I'll cover some of the essential features being offered in online storage, what's new in the field and some of the groups which I feel are offering particularly interesting or innovative takes on the internet hard drive.

Next part: Features of Online Storage

Labels: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, Broadband Internet access, Bulletin board system, File hosting service, internet file hosting, internet hard drive, online storage, Uploading and downloading