Opinion
My scanned slides archived on pCloud, which operates like P: drive on computers;
Icedrive operates similarly, as I:
Remember when Dropbox dropped on us? Although it was extolled for being new and therefore cool, it really was just FTP with a prettier face. (FTP, file transfer protocol, was the way we moved big files around before Dropbox; using FTP was not pretty.)
(1) Dropbox was even better by giving away boatloads of storage for free for all kinds of reasons. I took advantage of many of them, and so today I still have 26GB of storage free with it, although the company cut me back to using it on just three computers, so I run it on my primary desktop computer, my primary laptop, and my primary phone. Today, I use it as secondary online backup.
TIP For me, the most important function of online storage is its ability to copy photographs my wife and I take with our phones, effectively making real-time backups of every picture. This is valuable, should we ever lose a phone.
Once our photos are on the cloud, we can access them with any other computer. For extra security of my pictures, I have both Dropbox and pCloud uploading my photos automatically. It's important to have backups of backups.
I also have (2) Box, which gave me 50GB free, which I haven't accessed in ages.
Actually, my first online storage provider had the cutesy name of (3) Sugar, but I dropped it when they cancelled all customers with free plans. I think it is still around.
Of course, (4) Google offers 15GB free (I have 3.5GB worth of Goggle Docs there) and Microsoft's Onedrive has free storage, although I never use it to the point of doing whatever it takes to get it off my Windows computers, as it has the nasty habit of trying to grab my files. I think one of the worst ever free offers was six months of 100GB Google storage: yah, what happens to all your data after six months? Anyhow.
For me, the winner is (5) pCloud, because (a) it is from Switzerland (and so it is subject to the Swiss data protection act) and (b) it offers reasonably-priced lifetime plans. I have 500GB with them that I think I paid $179 -- once -- a few years ago. pCloud offers 10GB free at https://www.pcloud.com/, and I see that the 500GB plan has gone up to US$199.
Cost of non-subscription plans with pCloud
This became my go-to storage, as I loathe the thought of being held hostage to monthly and annual payments. pCloud's special trick is that it looks like a regular drive on your computer, in its case, the P: drive. I now I have 300GB of files on it, including 8GB worth of archives of all my scanned slides and negatives from yesteryear.
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But now I've added one more: (6) IceDrive from United Kingdom. It calls itself "The next generation of cloud storage," although I am not sure what is next-gen about it. It works just like pCloud, in that it looks like a drive, I: in its case. They offer 10GB free.
After I downloaded and installed IceDrive, I wondered, "Ummm, what do I do with it?" After a few days, I got myself an answer: I use it just for transferring files between computers and mobile devices. The other online storage services I use are so cluttered with folders (pCloud alone has 46 main folders and dozens more sub-folders) that sometimes it can be hard to find something.
So, yeah, IceDrive stays fairly clean so that it can carry out its task of transfer files for me.
The closest IceDrive comes to pCloud's lifetime fee is a 5-year plan, but that still makes me feel like I'm being held hostage to paying US$189 every five years. So, I'll stick to free with them.
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