Cloud storage .... what is it?
First things first, it's not actually up in the sky 😀 It is just stored in one of many datacentres across the world. Whether it's the Microsoft OneDrive, Google-Drive, Dropbox or any other cloud storage you may have heard of or used, it's just data stored on a server in a datacentre somewhere in the world.
The concept of it is brilliant in that you can send a file from your work PC, and by logging into the account on your home PC you are able to get the file. However, there is a big downside to this. And it's that you need to be connected (or online) to be able to do this.
For documents, storing them on the cloud doesn't take much data, so timewise, it's not too bad. Photographs and pictures on the other hand, do have lots of data, and therefore can be slow to send to receive.
I was speaking to a customer, and he moved all his photographs to the cloud and was saying that it took 10 days for them to move from his PC to his cloud storage - I don't know who his cloud storage provider is or how many photos he uploaded, but I do know he is an avid photographer so it's probably a lot.
If you are lucky enough to have a full-fibre connection for your internet, then using cloud storage isn't too much of a problem as the speeds are quite fast. If you have an ADSL type connection, then it can very slow to upload to the cloud (it will be faster to download as most connection types have faster download speeds compared to upload speeds).
Would I recommend using cloud storage?
As long as you have a decent internet connection speed, then yes. In fact, I use it all the time to store files, documents, pictures etc., as this allows me access wherever I am as long as I have an internet connection.
Here's a link to a very good video on YouTube by Tech Index that explains more about the cloud in a visual manner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P8gnpU-rU8
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