Since the era of digitization people have been using different forms of storage devices such as micro SD cards, pen drives, and hard drives. But one major drawback of these devices is their physical nature. You must always have them with you. This adds the risk of it being stolen or damaged while in the transfer. Also, if you switch between laptop and mobile you might need to carry dongles to make your hard drive compatible with them. To eliminate all these problems, cloud storage comes into the picture. We will understand what exactly it is and how cloud storage works.
What is cloud storage?
Introduction
- Consider this, you store your files in your Flash drive. Now every time you need to access it you connect it to your computer and access your files. What if I tell, you you can access your files without physically connecting your flash drive? This is the very fundamental concept of cloud storage.
- Your data is still stored in physical hard drives but you don’t need to connect it physically to your computer. Using the internet you can communicate with the drive where your data is and can view, store new files, and can even download them on your computer for local use.
How does it work
- Companies set up their huge data centers across the globe. These data centers are nothing but a place where the physical drives are stored and maintained where you will be able to store data. You need to create an account on the company website, and by entering the credential you can access your files.
- Each company provides different storage capacity which is expandable by paying additional costs. For example, google drive gives you free 15 GB of storage on creating a Google account. You can extend that up to 10 TB by buying a subscription plan.
Types of Cloud Storage Models
Public
In this, a company hosts the cloud service for multiple customers. This means a data center will be having data from various individuals and companies in one place. A few examples of these service providers would be Amazon web service, google drive, and Microsoft Drive. A person or a company can make their account on this platform and based on their requirement they can scale up or scale down their storage requirement.
Private
Companies that are huge, need to store a ton of data. Even more, a lot of the data could be highly confidential and hence sourcing could mean depending upon those companies for their security as well cost them way more. In such cases, the company itself establishes its data centers to have full control over it. This is true for banks and government agencies where the safety and confidentiality of documents are of utmost importance.
Although today even if can have your own cloud storage facility. Many companies provide equipment to set up a mini version of data centers. They occupy a small space. This is for users who don’t want to rely on external services and want to have their private cloud network. It gives you complete control over your data. One downside of this is that they come with some substantial cost.
Hybrid
As the name suggests, a company may use a private as well as a public model for cloud storage. One advantage is, the company can store its confidential files on its private cloud while other data are on the public cloud service.
Multi-cloud
It simply means an individual or a company using multiple public or private cloud services or even a combination of them at once. This reduces dependency on a single company. Also using multiple cloud services means if the data of one of such service providers gets compromised the company will not lose all of its data. It’s comparable to storing your eggs in many baskets.
Top companies providing cloud storage
Today many companies are providing you with cloud storage facilities. Mainly they differ in the cost they charge you per month for a given storage size. The user interface of the website and mobile application and a few additional features such as auto backup etc are the main differentiating points. Google Drive and Microsoft Drive lead this game when it comes to personal use as they provide a lot more services like email, notes, spreadsheets, etc which users can sync all in one place. Below is a list of a few well know cloud services
Conclusion
Finally, cloud storage is a fantastic solution to keep data and files safe. It is practical, dependable, and safe. You don’t have to be concerned about losing your data if something were to happen to your computer because you can access them from anywhere. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to your cloud storage is your files are as secure as your password is and hence it is important to create a strong password.