I, like so many, have a lot of digital information, and its growing, from simple letters and emails, through to the vast number of photos I now have dating back to about 1989, Then there are a load of presentations, research documents and scans, and thats just my private side, the business is just as big, with drawings, letters and site photos, plus other research and industry digital catalogs.
My private life is spread across several methods of storing all this stuff i keep, from Google Drive, to my Mac account, and evernote. Google holds the most, and what prompted this particular blog, was a note I got from Google telling me I am very close to my present limit of 116GB. I will increase it, I see no option, I rely og Google for so much, more on this later.
Apple, I have used for so long, their iCloud is ok, but sharing in any form is just impossible, compared to Google, so all I have there are backup of photos and some email, but the more I use Google, the more I want back into Gmail, so I have moved all my private mail, into gmail, even though I still use Apple Mail, next will be my business mail, the reason being, is I am going to have to up the limit to 1TB so to make full use of this space I am moving almost all over to drive.
I have a 1TB solid state drive on my Macbook Pro, but fairly use is as a permanent drive, having lost several over the years I just will not trust them to hold important information, having lost a lot on the previous failures. Its more a buffer for Dropbox.
My business account is stored in Dropbox, it have been there for some time, and it works well, I share it with my business partner, who sees changes almost immediately, but here's the rub, they have a min space of also 1TB. I want to move this to Google Drive, but fear it will be a little more difficult to share files like Vectorworks, so for the time being its a hit I will have to take.
Apart from some small drives that these days hold nothing, I have a couple of large pen drives, but distrust them completely so apart from a simple transfer from one machine to another, I stay away from them as permanent drives for information.
So for now its Google Drive, and I stay for so many reasons, the suite of tools within drive are excellent, and sharing is so good, unlike Apple who just will not allow it or make it difficult.
So I sat back and thought about this whole storage thing, is this the end of storage in private servers, well at least for the general public, Google seem to think so, in fact they have moved their business more into cloud storage than many with their drive, and the Chrome laptops, it relies upon good wifi or a hookup to the net, but all you want is their in a Chrome browser. Apple might get there, but why wait, Google is offering what I presently want.
But having spent some time in an environment thats hit and miss with wifi, it can be a pain when your not connected, and makes me wonder about some local permanent storage.
As a futurist, I took time out and cleared my head, is this cloud storage really going to be the last evolution of storage, certainly the vast amount I have which I suppose is small in comparison to some and infinitely small when compared to many companies, currently needs cloud storage, it's safe, they offer backup, and apart from certain period in a year, I generally have very good wifi connection.
Is it all about compression, can I get more data into an ever decreasing storage space, are there better ways of storing all my data. Looking at a search I did, the answer is yes, there is a lot going on, but not at my scale, what I did see is more for the big boys.
So thats it, I stay with Google for my main, Apple for limited backup, Dropbox for business files, and my laptop for little else.
Todays photo is all about dust, and how it spreads about to globe.
