Frugal Fridays - Free Cloud/File Storage!

Today's technology is amazing!  Nowadays, one can download a ton of photo, music and video files to a computer.  Before I started this blog, I really didn't mess with computers much.  I never took advantage of digital cameras or the ability to download music.  However, this blog inspired me to start taking pictures and learning how to download and record music.  I now have a ton of photos and music stored on our computer, and I often worry about losing it all.

I've heard about "cloud" storage, but the few I've come across charged more than I wanted to pay.  Remember, I'm really frugal so $60 a year isn't something I consider "cheap".  I wanted something that was either free or really inexpensive.  Just yesterday, I came across something that may just be the solution!  It's called SkyDrive, and it stores up to 7GB of files on your PC, laptop and smartphone (we don't have one of these yet) for free!  The files can be accessed from any of your devices and there's no syncing or cables required.  It works on Windows and Mac, and if you need more storage you can purchase an additional 20GB, 50GB, or 100GB for $10, $25 or $50 per year.

I have been thinking of file storage, backing up files, and preventing the loss of this site for a while now.  Whenever I do ... my head starts spinning!  I've thought about purchasing an external hard drive to store all of our photos and music, as I've often imagined our ipod falling into the water or our computer crashing!  I've learned how to back up my site and save it to a file, so I'm thinking that SkyDrive may be an easy way to insure that I don't lose this site, our music and our photos.

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm self-taught and really only know the basics about all this stuff.  I'm going to download SkyDrive today and start using it.  I hope this may also be a solution for some of you too!  If you're familiar with this service, I'd love to hear your thoughts, opinions or suggestions on this topic.

Speaking of saving pictures, I've been going through all of our pictures from our recent vacation.  We had such a great time, and I'll have more posts and pics of our vacation next week.

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!

*For those that missed the other posts of this series, check them out below:

• Frugal Fridays - The Rest Stop!                              Frugal Fridays - The Internet
• Frugal Fridays - Goodwill                                         Frugal Fridays - The Day After 
• Frugal Fridays - Happy Hour!                                 Frugal Fridays - A Little Patience
• Frugal Fridays - An Almost Free Vacation!           Frugal Fridays - Free Music!
• Frugal Fridays - The Class Room                            Frugal Fridays - Free Workout Videos!
• Frugal Fridays - Free Corona                                  Frugal Fridays - Bring It!
• Frugal Fridays - Credit Cards!                                Frugal Fridays - Retirement Accounts
• Frugal Fridays - Portion Control                              Frugal Fridays - Tour Like A Local!