What are the best cloud services to back up your data?

Are you running out of space on your hard drive for your documents? Want to try an online storage provider, but do not know where to turn? Futura offers you its selection of the best cloud services to save your data and presents their strengths.

Before talking in detail about the best solutions for storing your data online, first answer the following question: why choose a cloud service instead of the classic hard drive? If both have the same basic function of backing up your data, cloud services provide benefits that can not be provided by a hard drive:

  • Have a dematerialized copy of its most important files: thus, the user can restore them easily and quickly in case of hardware failure;
  • Have access to their data from any connected device (computer, smartphone, tablet );
  • Ability to share and edit documents as part of collaborative work.

Dropbox

Dropbox is certainly a pioneer of cloud services and, as such, has been able to grow the advantage it has taken on the competition. It must be said that the handling of Dropbox is done in minutes in a completely intuitive way.

The interface is refined, reduced to its simplest expression: just click on “Transfer” and choose whether you want to save a file or an entire folder.

Items stored on Dropbox will then appear in “My Files”. The user, through a drop-down menu, can decide to share his files or organize them at his convenience by adding them to favorites, by renaming, deleting, moving or copying them.

But where Dropbox is really interesting is by offering a multitude of options associated with collaborative projects. It is indeed very easy to request files from relatives or collaborators by sending a link or an e-mail.

Dropbox also includes a tool specifically designed for group work: Dropbox Paper. Thanks to him, the user can create documents from templates (brainstorming, meeting notes, project plan) and make them available to the people concerned.

It becomes a real way to get organized through custom task lists to which you can add a due date.

Dropbox offers to store 2GB of data for free, which is less than some of its competitors offering a non-paying backup space.

However, this ability can be increased without leaving the wallet by inviting friends to join you (an additional 500 MB per friend up to 16 GB total), following the steps in the Quick Start Guide (250 MB) or bringing his contribution to the Dropbox community forum (1 GB per  Mighty Answer ).

Dropbox offers the possibility to upgrade to a higher account: “Plus” and “Professional” for individuals, “Standard” and “Advanced” for teams.

At this point, the user has more storage space (1TB with unlimited storage), advanced tools for data protection, collaboration, productivity, and administration.

If you have a Dropbox account or want to create one, Futura recommends you read the article ” Securing your Dropbox account with a USB key ” to ensure maximum protection for your data.