Back in the mid 90s, a computer with a 200-megabyte hard drive was good enough for us and one with 300 to 400 megabyte would impress even the computer geeks. I remember the high-pitched sound they made indicating their excitement with the hardware. Ahh, those were the good old simple days. At the present time, that number does not even begin to cover the digital realty needed for standard operating systems like Windows XP or MAC OSX to reside in. Dont get me started on the popular applications today because they are absolutely storage space hogs. Floppy disk drives and diskettes with 1.44 megabyte storage room are almost extinct and the standard capacity of hard drives that comes with new computer systems are in the 80 to 100 gigabytes range. Hows that for technological advancement? Also in vogue are flash drives with 512 megabytes to 1-gigabyte capacity. These small and portable devices are great for moving files to and from another computer, if you need to share data with a peer or if you want to backup your files. I remember the days when I had to span floppy diskettes just to move a 2-megabyte file thereby using 2 floppies. If you think that was bad, try backing up large data files and a box of floppies wouldnt be enough.
Storage isnt much of a problem now. If you have a decent broadband internet connection at home or at the office, you can store an almost indefinite number of files online. Think terabytes. If you have the bandwidth, then the cyberworld is your oyster when it comes to data storage. But who needs a virtually limitless storage space? Well, some people like to store files like movie clips, video recordings and applications online and retrieve them later on when they need them. So how would you go about doing the same thing? Look for a website that would serve as your online storehouse. Most would offer their services for free with an option to pay for an upgrade that would mean more storage space and other advanced features. Some would require you to register before you can use their service, while in others, you can start uploading or downloading immediately without requiring you to register. Personally, I prefer the latter because of the anonymity that it grants.
The whole idea of being able to access your files anywhere in the world and at anytime so long as you have a computer and an internet connection is truly amazing. For me, it even borders on the ingenious. This concept isn't actually new, it's been around for sometime but only recently is this service available to the general public. Data like pictures, documents, executables, mp3's and wav recordings are the most common files that we use in our day-to-day activities involving the computer and the web. Storing these files online will in all likelihood make them omnipresent. I am certain that by now you would have thought of some use for this innovative service. So start uploading your files to your own personal data repository and just download them anytime you see fit to do so. |
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