Options for online storage - what do I use when?
Friday, December 21, 2012 at 06:20AM ... curation—choosing what to save, where to store it, how to update it, and when to recall it—is more than a response to information overload, but a 21st century skill all of its own. Terry Heick
Over the past couple months, I've given my Schools in the Cloud workshop and the questions always comes up, "Do I need both Dropbox and Evernote? Do I need both Dropbox and GoogleDrive? I get the concept of why it's good to have my documents stored in the cloud so they are available and synched to all my devices, but really, why do I need so many options?" I hear these questions as a tech director from those in my own district as well.
These aren't bad questions and are similar to ones that have come up before in our district related to sharing and collaborative editing of documents and publishing instructional resources and digital communication options. So here we go again.
Here is how I use each of these tools and how you might decide if they are for you as well:
Evernote. i love Evernote and have been using it for a number of years. It's my sticky note-replacement, scrapbook, to-read pile, and curation tool of materials on topics of interest. I always put a copy of tickets for events, hotel reservations, and boarding passes in Evernote. The Clipper add-on for the Chrome and Firefox browsers work great and the app for iOS works nicely on both my phone and iPad. I put "standard responses to commonly asked questions" in Evernote notes, such as driving directions to my office. For me, Evernote is best used to capture materials written by others, stored and organized and for keeping short messages that are readily accessible. I suspect I have only scratched the surface of what Evernote can do.
Dropbox. I also love Dropbox and have been using it as my primary storage/backup solution for a couple years. I pay the $80 or so a year which provides me with a 100GB storage space that allows me to keep ALL my files (not programs) in folders within the Dropbox folder on my computers. This assures me of an automatic back up each time I change or add a file. I've grown to appreciate the ability to share big files like PowerPoint slideshows using the Public folder in Dropbox too. So for me, Dropbox is best used to store anything I would normally store on the hard drive of my computer, organized as I would store it on my hard drive - and to share files too big to send as e-mail attachments.
Google Drive. Google Drive, the resource formerly known as Google Docs, for me has primarily been a means of creating, storing, and sharing materials I have created using Docs in the free 5GB of space (GoogleDocs do not count against the allowance). With the change from Docs to Drive, this tool now behaves more lke Dropbox, permiting the storage of multiple file types, not just Docs. For those new to online file storage, this might be a good alternative to Dropbox if one needs more than the 2GB of storage that comes with Dropbox's free version but less than the 100GB of storage of the paid version. There is a Google Drive desktop version so files can be pushed into a desktop folder. There is also now an "official" Drive extension for the Chrome web browser so one can right-click on images and webpages for storage in Drive - so, perhaps Drive will replace Evernote for some people as well.
There are lots of other online storage tools as well, but these are the most popular. What do you think - what clarification or advice to give others when they are confronted with a choice of storage options?
Reader Comments (5)
I use all three, in much the same way you do. The difference is that I use Carbonite for a real HD backup, Dropbox for anything I might want to save and use elsewhere. I know I won't need my Quicken data or iTunes except on my main computer, so they're on Carbonite only (ditto program downloads, etc.) - everything else is in both. Perhaps that's overkill, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
What about photos? The problem I have is there are plenty of things for backing up, but I want them off my hard drive to create some breathing room, but I want them somewhere online (and not too expensive). Right now I just have them on two backup drives and Shutterfly, but it's a pain to find them when I want to, say, look at a certain group of pix from, say, a vacation five years ago.
Hi Laura,
I used Carbonite for a year or two but couldn't figure out what I was getting that I wasn't getting from Dropbox - plus with Dropbox I could access single files and only modified files were synched. I am sure there is something I am missing. Have a happy holiday season.
Doug
Hi Ninja,
Yeah, photos are a problem. I still keep all mine in iPhoto that is then kept in Dropbox. I also keep my "best" stuff in SmugMug. Neither of these solutions help with local drive storage issues (my Air's 100GB drive is about full. I wish there were a means in Dropbox to designate which folders were ONLY online and which were also on one's local computer. Maybe there is and I don't know the trick.
Have a great Christmas!
Doug
I use Dropbox and Google Drive daily for both personal and school library stuff and love them both for different reasons. Dropbox is great for sharing videos between devices. I use Google Drive for everything and hardly ever use MS Office anymore. Google Drive does not allow you to download a video to an iOS device as Dropbox does, so that's why I use dropbox for videos. I've used Evernote a bit and do enjoy having items available in it when I'm looking for them, but based on your post I think I need to use Evernote more. I'd say you made good choices in your post. For my personal pictures I like to use Google+.
Hi Shawn,
I think the moral is that there is no single tool that does it all!. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Doug