Free Online File Storage?

I started using a software to convert DVD movies to WMV to play in my ATT 8525 pocket pc phone formerly known as Cingular 8525. The software im using is "Pocket DVD Studio "that you can find and download from this website.

The program is preety simple to use, you just open it look for a video file in your computer, click the record button and that's it. There are some settings that you can change like the screen size, video and audio quality in order to end with a smaller file size. For example a dvd movie (just the movie without special features) will turn out to be about 200 to 300 megabytes depending on the length of the movie and your setting selections. Now, if your using a 1gb storage card for your device you'll be able to store about 2 or 3 movies and some other stuff like pictures, songs and a couple of downloads. I dont intent to have a 20 or 30 movie collection in my pocket pc, just 2 or 3 available at the same time. But the thing is that I will still need some space available to keep all the movies that I have converted in one place, not my laptop, because it's gonna eat up a lot of memory and that's when I started searching for a website that offered free online storage services.

After being searching for a while I found a few interesting details that made me change my mind about storing my files online. First of all most of these so called "free" online storage websites are not free at all, some of them are but with a very limited amount of storage (2gb to 5gb) and there is a size limit for every upload. For example, most of them don't allow uploads of files bigger than 200mb, so as I mention before most of the WMV movie files turned out to be between 200 and 300 mb after converted, so that would not work for me because I wont be able to upload any files that are bigger than 200mb. Another thing is that the files are deleted if you don't access your account or update your files within a certain amount of time, most of this services delete your files in 14 or 30 days. Also, a few of them are "sharing" websites meaning that after you upload your files anyone have access to them, like private family pictures or video that you don't want anyone else to see but you. Another thing that made my head go on a no-no motion was the speed rate that your files are uploaded to this websites, I don't have precise details about this facts but if you use your common sense you already know that uploading an image or an article for a blog with a size of a couple of KB's it could take up a whole of a lot of time depending on web traffic, imagine how much time would take to upload a 150mb size file if your're using a website where everyone is supposed to be doing the exact same thing, uploading. Finally most of these websites are on "starting business" so that means that they could go out of business at any time, leaving your precious files and data gone forever, even if you decide to go for one of those that have been in the business for a couple of years and pay for a subscription you still take the risk to loose all your data if the website is taken down.

So what's the solution? easy; buying an external hard drive. An external hard drive will provide enough storage enough speed and the right hardware for the right price. You can get an external hard drive for about $80 dollars with a 120gb storage capacity, way much more from that 5gb storage offered by box.net (one of the sites that cought my attention because it offers a feauture that allows you to stream your video files from your account to your mobile device) but you will have to pay $7.95 a month or $79.95 a year and you will have to keep paying forever.

Free online services are getting more popular these days and while some of this websites may be a solution for file sharing over the internet when it comes to find a way to keep your personal files at hand and safe most of them fail to deliver the service you expect to get. Now, what would be the best external hard drive for your pc, well that's another whole post.

Went surfing.

For a list of free online storage services go to this post: 100 File Storage Websites