Gadgetory

hello and welcome to cnet's the fix a show about DIY tech and how to's I'm Donnell Bell and I'm Sharon Profis and in this episode we're concentrating on the cloud which is the best way you can access all of your data no matter where you are yeah a lot of these services are very cost-effective most of them offer you increased storage Eric Franklin is gonna show us our best options the cloud isn't some complicated idea that only techies can understand despite its name the cloud is simply the concept of story and accessing your content over the Internet as opposed to directly from your computer that's it so here are some of the best ways to store and access your files folders and media online for free Google Drive is the one I use most primarily for work but also for personal docs and projects honestly pretty much everything I type is at least in an untitled Google Drive document somewhere drive offers 15 gigabytes of free storage now unfortunately that spread across all Google services including gmail so if you send a large attachment it counts against your storage now just to be clear this isn't a pure cloud storage option it's more like online office not to be confused with microsoft office online of course drives great you can pretty much store anything you want but if you have a google account you already have access to it so you likely have some experience with it now if you want to just purely store data in the cloud here are three services that are perfect for doing just that any files you copy into your sync folder will show up in your cloud drive so you'll be able to access the file from anywhere and even if you delete the sync files from your computer you'll still be able to go to the internet and access them each of these services allow you to share files with anyone else through email and each includes apps for both Android and iOS if you're interested in getting an initial 10 gigabytes of storage for free check out box the interface here is simple and appealing but keep in mind for the problem with box is that there is a 250 megabyte file size limit not very large if you're planning to store audio or video though most pics we'll make it through just fine you can upgrade to a 100 gigabyte capacity and increase the minimum file size to 5 gigabytes now Microsoft onedrive is useful for both windows and mac users and it gives you an initial 15 gigabytes of storage capacity it also supports up to two gigabyte file sizes also for every friend you get to sign up you get an extra 500 megabytes of storage up to 5 gigabytes for a total of 20 gigabytes if you sink one drive with your phone's camera you also get an extra three gigabytes of storage now what's really cool is that if I download one drive to this computer I can then go to another remote computer log into my onedrive account and then access every file on this computer regardless of whether it was st. or not also if you're willing to pay two dollars per month you get 100 gigabytes of storage and for four dollars you get a whopping 200 gigabytes pretty great deal if you need a lot of storage lastly there's Dropbox now this may be the most popular of the pure cloud storage services reason being it supports the most platforms including Linux and blackberry now right off the bat you only get two gigabytes of storage but like one drive each time you get a friend to join you get an extra 500 megabytes of storage added up to a limit of 16 gigabytes also by linking your account to social media sites like Facebook or Twitter or setting up a mailbox account you get an extra one gigabyte for each of those or enable the camera upload feature and get another three gigabytes so although dropbox storage start slow you can easily increase it at no additional cost and if you're using the app or desktop program there's no file size limit for about ten dollars per month you can upgrade to pro which gives you 100 gigabytes of storage for twenty dollars you get two hundred megabytes and for fifty dollars you get 500 gigabytes all these options are great for storing your data in the cloud overall onedrive has the best features and is the best bang for your buck it's time for a quick break but when we come back we're going to show you how you can set up your own personal cloud welcome back you know the more we use our tech for data we have to store like my iphone but always runs out of space because I take so many photos stop taking photos yourself or you know it's true though the more photos we get the more videos more files we have to store them somewhere but if you do it yourself you can save some money cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive are great if you don't have a lot of data to store but if you have a larger media library and you don't want to pay a monthly subscription for cloud storage the best solution is to create your own cloud at the high end you can create your own 16 terabyte now server that functions a lot like Dropbox but it's really geared more towards the business professional and it can get really pricey so instead I'll show you how to set up a basic cloud for yourself it'll let you download share and manage files just like you would on any other branded cloud storage service you can expect to pay anywhere from about 150 to 250 dollars for this type of setup to get started the first thing I'll do is plug in the my cloud directly into my router then use western digital software to set up the device I'll create a user account and finally my cloud is basically set up so now any files and folders I want in my cloud I just drag and drop into here once I've got all of my files in there some photos and video I'm ready to access them from any other device so in this case on my Windows computer it's as easy as launching the browser and signing into WDS portal online since this is a Windows computer I'll actually browse my cloud using an explorer window there's my video double-click and I'm streaming it over the web I can even drag and drop files from this computer directly onto my cloud to top it all off there's an easy way to access all of your files from your smartphone using WD zap just like any other cloud platform I can use it to view and stream any files I have in my cloud plus I can use the app to back up and share photos I've taken on my phone my cloud is by far the easiest and cheapest way to set up your own cloud but remember that since it is a single volume there's no insurance if your drive fails so use the USB input on the back to plug in an external hard drive and backup your cloud just to be safe if you like to take a lot of photos like Sharon does you probably want a way to keep those organized and have them be accessible well there are tons of sites out there that will do exactly that but before you go signing up for one there are some important things to consider so here are some tips to help you get started and choose the best site that's right for you I spent a good portion of my life trying to figure out the best way to store my photos it all started with shoeboxes and then I moved to hard drives and then are all went to the cloud now we're lucky enough to live in a time where there's so many options when it comes to storing our photos online but on the other hand with some of the options out there how do you pick the right one I'm gonna give you some advice on choosing the right cloud photo storage solution that works for you first off you want to think long term the reason so many companies offer you free storage for your photos is because they know how difficult it can be to switch services down the line so you want to think about a company that's gonna be around for the next 10 20 50 years but if this is going to be my main back up for a lifetime of photos I don't trust the young guys won't go under in the next 10 years or be sold to another company so that leaves us with the big boys he got Google Apple Amazon Microsoft Yahoo and to some extent Dropbox though we have a hard time believing they won't get snatched up eventually let's boot out Apple and Amazon right off the bat iCloud only works with Apple devices and it doesn't handle video so boo and then Amazon's Cloud Drive is just too basic so let's go through the rest Google's photo service is called Google+ photos you get 15 gigs and free stores though you have to share those gigabytes with your gmail and your google drive it also works with your browser or you can auto upload from the Android or iOS app now if you need more storage you can pay for it up to 16 terabytes downside is is tied to google plus Google's answer to Facebook you can set photos to private but ultimately Google is dangling the service out there to get people to use their social network and share photos more people more photos more stuff to sell ads around which is really what Google is all about for something a little more cut-and-dry you can try Microsoft onedrive formerly Microsoft SkyDrive it works with Android and iOS and also windows and windows phone comes with 15 gigs of free storage plus you can buy more it's a clean layout includes detailed information on your photos include the exif data my only worry here is as the recent name change implies is that I don't feel Microsoft is totally I earned this thing out I mean Microsoft as a company is gonna be around a long time but I feel like maybe this time next year Microsoft will call this thing super xbox live photos or something else I mean it's still a great solid option especially if you're a Windows user you have a Windows Phone but if you're not there's some other options to explore next up dropbox almost identical to one drive it's an online file locker with a very clean look and apps for every platform including windows they have a mobile app called carousel it does an excellent job of letting you quickly browse through your photo collection with a timeline bar at the bottom of the app the downside here is that you only get five gigs of free storage before you have to start paying unlike Microsoft or Google online storage is drop boxes entire business and they don't make up the difference on online advertising finally there's flickr by yahoo and full disclosure I've used flickr for years so I'm a little biased it works on every platform even windows phone there are useful privacy controls is a huge community of users and the best part is there's one terabyte of free storage you'll get some ads but a full terabyte should be enough to back up your average photo library also video support is limited to one gigabyte per video so you have to back up longer clips to youtube or do the world a favor and shoot shorter vacation videos so there you go that's my best advice for where to go to store your photos in the clouds well now you know i'm a flickr guy and I don't blame you one terabyte free is not about it's hard to resist alright that's it for this week's show thanks for watching guys hopefully by now you are a cloud expert and if you want to reach out to us I'm at Donald on Twitter and I'm at Sharon Profis plus there's an email but fix at cnet com and that gets all of us yep and email us because we actually read the messages it's true thanks for watching bye guys you