Online Storage of Data

Web-based storage option is certainly getting popular day by day. You may need it if you have too much of data to handle in your business. There are several service providers for that and this list includes big names too.

Amazon introduced its newest service, Amazon S3, several weeks ago. Internet users can store gigabytes of data here on the cheap -- $0.15 per gigabyte of storage used per month, plus $0.20 per gigabyte of data transferred.

Other online storage providers charge higher: New providers like Box.net ($1 per GB per month) and XDrive ($2 per GB per month) and older providers like Novastor ($12.95 per GB per month) and Quicken Online Backup ($24.95 per month for up to 10 GB).

One important point about S3: While anyone can use S3, Amazon built it mainly for Web developers -- which means there's no simple interface for uploading data to the service. In fact, there's no Web-based interface at all.

So, there appears a new breed of third-party service-providers who are offering easy access to S3 for a small (or non-existent) fee. Most of these services use a downloadable client program that runs on your local PC. This software can often be programmed to begin backups at specified times, and to compress and encrypt data for upload. Here are a few of them:
Altexa -- $1 per GB per month up to 10 GB, if you pay for 12 months' service up front.
ElephantDrive -- Free during the company's beta-testing period.
Filicio.us -- Free, but you must sign up for an Amazon S3 account and pay the usual $0.15 per GB for storage and $0.20 per GB for transfers.
Jungle Disk -- Free aside from Amazon S3's charges, as with Filicio.us.

Rumor is that Google -- which practically invented low-cost online storage in April, 2004, with its free 1-GB Gmail accounts (now 2GB or more) -- may roll out its long-rumored "GDrive" service. Also, Microsoft may offer a low-cost backup storage service as an optional part of Vista (the new upcoming operating system).