Windows Live SkyDrive - 500MB of secure online storage from Microsoft

Posted on August 14, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Online File Storage series!

Windows Live SkyDrive - 500MB of secure online storage from Microsoft
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Use your Gmail account as online file storage
DriveWay - Upload and share multiple large files up to 500 MB each for free

You can now store your files online securely with Microsoft using SkyDrive with 500MB of free space. Even though the service is in beta, it has been out for the last week and anyone can sign up, no invitations required. Of course, there are already many online file storage solutions out there and Microsoft is trying to jump into the market with SkyDrive, it’s main selling point eventually being that it will integrate with many other Live services.

Simply put, there are three levels of access in SkyDrive: personal, shared, and public. Before you being uploading files, you first create a folder and determine the security access for that folder. A personal folder can only be accessed by you and no one else. A shared folder can be accessed by only the people you specify, so friends and family for example. Of course, they will need to register for a Windows Live ID in order to access the files. A public folder can be viewed by anyone in the world!

You can access your files from anywhere and the service works with both IE and Firefox, Windows and Mac. Another good thing about SkyDrive is that once you login, all file transfers use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and are therefore protected from eavesdroppers. It’s also very easy to share your files with anyone because each file and folder that you create has it’s own separate web address.

Once you’ve logged in, the interface is very intuitive with your profile, personal folders (documents, music, pictures, videos, etc), share folders, and public folders.

To begin uploading files, click Add files at the right of the folder type. You can upload up to 5 files at a time, each up to 50MB. While the files are uploading, you can play a game that loads up one the progress page. From my experience so far, I really like how fast the files are uploaded and the fact that the connection was not during the upload.

One note, when you create a shared folder, there is the option of adding a person as a reader or contributor. A reader can only view files, whereas a contributor can view, add, change, and delete items in a folder. However, you won’t be able to add any readers or contributors unless you have people in your address book! In order to add contacts, you need to have Windows Live Messenger and have the contact setup there. That’s the only annoying thing I found about the service, it should let you simply type in email addresses and let the people sign up themselves!

Other than that one annoying aspect, I found it very user-friendly and useful. Hopefully, once it’s out of beta, they will upgrade the service to more than 500MB!

Also, if you use Windows Live Space and Windows Live Writer, there are already plug-ins that allow you to put your public files onto your Spaces profile and embed code into your blog for your public SkyDrive folder. You can find out more about these plug-ins here.

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