Are you running out of storage space? I'm not talking
about your living room closet that contains 58 jackets,
some of which haven't been worn since the Crusades,
a vaccum cleaner, three bowling balls and dust bunnies
bigger than apples. I'm talking about disk storage space.
If you are running out of storage space, or if you
would like a place available online to store files accessible
while both at work and home, then keep reading. If not,
maybe do something more productive, like making toast
or cleaning out that closet. From experience, I should
mention those large dust bunnies could be used as excellent
fake beards.
You have a certain amount of storage space available
on your hard drive. To check this on the PC, click on
My Computer and single-click on the local drive. In
the left-hand panel you will see a pie chart showing
the used and free disk space. For Mac users, you can
view this by single-clicking on the hard drive and clicking
apple-i. This will display information about your hard
drive, including the capacity, the total used, the total
remaining and the amount of toast you can consume in
one sitting.
Unless you already know, this might be a good opportunity
to explain the meaning of GB, which you probably saw
behind a number if you were examining disk space. That
does not stand for Green Bay, Golden Boy or Gray Beard.
A gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes; one megabyte is 1,024
kilobytes; and one kilobyte is 1,024 bytes. An easier
way to remember this, though, is that a kilobyte is
210 bytes, a megabyte is 220 bytes
and a gigabyte is 230 bytes. Do you really
need to know anything else? Now you can look at some
of your files more closely to see how much room you
really need for the files and your bowling balls.
This might be adequate space, but then again, you might
be running short on space, with video clips, music,
etc. (By the way, you still have time to vote
your all-time favorite songs!) Or maybe you just
need a more efficient way to use files from anywhere,
not just work. Luckily, there are plenty of options,
and none require you to clean skeltons out of your closet.
The most desirable option depends entirely on what
type of files you will be storing. If you need a place
to park photos, especially those of you wearing all
of those crusty jackets, try Club
Photo or Fotki.
You can then establish albums to share with others,
either publicly or privately. Or maybe you need a place
to store mp3s. At Myplay,
you can store over 2 gb of songs that can be downloaded
by others. There's even a place to store and sell your
files at Zden.
You can start earning points if others purchase your
files or if you refer additional members.
If you need a place to store different types of files
— whether they be text files, images, databases,
whatever — I would recommend Apple's
iDisk or Yahoo's
Briefcase. The iDisk gives you 100 mb of space,
accessible virtually anywhere. You don't have to have
a Mac to use it, either. Briefcase allows 30 mb of disk
space. Both are upgradeable (by payment, of course)
for additional capacity.
This is just a small sample; for more alternatives
to file storage, check out the lists at Prospector
and FreeWebspace.net.
As you can see, there are plenty of places to keep copies
of files in case you would ever need them. I would recommend
that if you plan to keep copies of dust bunnies, to
put them back in the closet.
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