Free Online Storage and Backup

Each of the services listed below is truly one hundred percent free and none of them require a credit card or other form of payment information. Typically all you need to do to get started is register for an account with an e-mail address and password, download the client software for your Mac or PC and you're in business.

In total these services will give you 45 GB of completely free online storage space! (or more if you count referral bonus space that some give)

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Mozy is one of the major players in the world of online backup, with a large amount of consumers as well as business as their customers. They claim to have passed the 1 million customer mark in 2009, so that should tell you something. Another interesting fact about Mozy is that they are owned by EMC, which is a company specialized in large redundant data storage systems with many Fortune 500 customers in its portfolio.

The free version of Mozy, called Mozy Home Free gives you an account with 2 GB of space that has the exact same functionality as Mozy Home Unlimited (which costs $4.95 per month for unlimited space). You can associate 2 computers with your Mozy Home Free account.

Mozy is a pure automatic online backup solution, and there is client software for Windows systems (7 / Vista / XP) as well as Mac computers (OS X 10.4+). The software runs scheduled, secure (encrypted) backups of files and folders you specify. There is no file size limitation and Mozy keeps a 30 day file version history for each file.

Test Drive Mozy with a free 2 GB Account!

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Gygan is a new service officially not out of beta yet, but you can already sign up for free in a couple of steps and start using the fully functional client software

The client is currently only available for Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Uploading to Gygan is easy and they claim to give you free unlimited uploads, unlimited storage, sharing and bandwidth. Also, there is no file size limitation so whether you want to upload and share a 20 MB zip file or a 1 GB video file, it can be done with the free account.

Your downloads are not unlimited, however. The download limit is 4 GB per month, and if you want to download more than that you would need to upgrade to a paid account.

Be careful when you upload files; The default setting for uploads is 'this is a public file' - meaning it is shared with the world. Make sure you select the 'this file is private' before uploading. This means that if you want to share the file with someone you would have to send them the specific link to that file.

Give Gygan a try with a free account

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Humyo is no more. After it was purchased by Trend Micro, the free 10 GB account was canned. Bummer, it was really good.

Humyo is a feature-rich online storage and backup solution, and the company claims to be Europe's largest independent online storage provider with more than a half million customers.

Humyo Free provides you with 10 GB free space (split in 5GB for media files + 5 GB for non-media files).

10 Gigabytes is a very decent amount of space, but they provide it to you with rather limited features when compared to what you get as a paying customer. The paid version of Humyo is very good (read my detailed review), with excellent client software for Windows as well as Mac environments that provides automated backup, drive letter access, sharing and saving operations from contextual menus, ad-free personal web portal, etc.

The Humyo Free edition does not give you the desktop client, and you are limited to using it via the web portal only. File uploads / downloads take place via the portal's Java applet. All web portal pages, including those you create for sharing files, photos or documents, have advertising banners and text ads.

Having said that, the Humyo web portal by itself is elegantly designed and easy to use with features like photo gallery sharing, MP3 / movie streaming, etc.

Claim your 10 GB Free Humyo Account

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IDrive is another major player in the online backup and storage market. The IDrive client software is available for Windows as well as Mac computers.

IDrive Basic gives you a free 2 GB account that can be used with 1 computer, and the free version has the exact same feature-rich functionality as a paid IDrive Pro account.

Want 10 GB extra? IDrive has a 'friend referral' program that is a bit on the spammy side, but if you use it you get 10 GB extra free space. If you use the 'refer friends button, IDrive asks you to send an e-mail to all people in your e-mail address book. Not the right way to do it if you ask me, but anyhoo...

Idrive has some excellent features such as: true archiving, continuous backup, mapped drive support, open / locked file support, versioning (up to 30 versions), no file size limit, scheduled backup status notifications and more. File transfers are secure and data is encrypted in storage.

Try IDrive Basic with a free 2 GB account

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The advantages of online backup and storage over traditional backup (to DVD or external drive, for example) is that your data is backed up and stored at a remote location, a location that is different from the place (your home or office) where the original data resides.

Why is this important? If someone breaks in to your house and steals your equipment, your data is gone. If your house gets struck by a disaster, such as a fire, flood or tornado, your data is gone.

And I know what you're thinking: "That will never happen to me." Well let's hope it doesn't, but the point I am trying to get across is that a physical separation of original data and its backup, such as is common in corporate environments, is not a bad idea.

Another advantage of many online backup and storage solutions is that they allow you to have 'anywhere access' to your data via a web portal, Iphone application, etc. So if you're on the road and really need that document or really feel like watching that movie, you'll have instant access to it.

Mozy Online Backup Special: Save 10% + up to 3 months FREE Promo Code: MAY

Last but not least, many of the services make it very easy for you to do things like sharing photo galleries or documents, sending large files to someone (ever tried e-mailing a 200MB movie to someone?) or creating sync folders for collaboration on projects.

In case you're wondering if your data is safe when using an online backup and storage solution, please read my Lens Is Online Storage Safe? Don't forget to come back here :) !

Online backup and storage is more affordable than ever, with paid services starting at for example $5 for unlimited backup space (Mozy), or with pay as you go pricing where you only pay per GB of use (JungleDisk).

But, in this Lens I want to share with you the many available free online backup and storage services you can start out with to see if it is something you think is useful. Or maybe you do not need several hundred Gigabytes of space to backup your stuff, in which case you'll see there is plenty of choice with completely free accounts ranging from 2 GB to 25 GB.

After our (not so hilarious) commercial break, let's continue the list of free online backup and storage services. We've already seen Mozy, Gygan, Humyo, SpiderOak and IDrive. Moving on to our next service, DropBox.

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Dropbox offers an online storage, synching and sharing solution with clients for Windows, Mac, Linux and Iphone.

With Dropbox Basic you get a free 2 GB account that has features identical to the paid versions, and you can associate multiple computers with your account, which is useful for file & folder synching.

Interesting: With DropBox you can refer friends and get up to 8 GB Extra free space for a total of 10 GB.

Dropbox Basic allows you to set up folder synching between your computers (and IPhone), instant backup of files dropped in your Dropbox folder, 30 day file history, and easy sharing of files and things like photo galleries with others.

Get your free 2 GB Dropbox Basic account and try it out.

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SpiderOak provides automated online backup services with client software available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.They also aim to give you the best security architecture in the industry.

SpiderOak Free gives you a free 2 GB account with the very same features and functionality as a paid SpiderOak Plus account (which costs $10.00 / month or $100 / year for 100 GB of space).

You can install the SpiderOak client on multiple computers under the same account. Some of its features are automated encrypted backups, synchronization, sharing and archiving. Spideroak also prides itself in the high level of security they dub '100% Zero-knowledge Privacy'.

Get your SpiderOak Free 2GB Account

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Did you know that you can now store any type of file in your Google Docs account? You used to be able to only store documents, spreadsheets, etc, but now you are free to upload zips, executables, movies, etc, which you can then choose to share with everyone or just specific people.

Nice about Google Docs is that - in the case of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations you can collaborate with others, i.e. multiple people can potentially edit a file. Good for project work, family checklists, etc.

The default amount of free storage space you get with your Google Docs account is 1 GB. That's not a whole lot, but hey, a free Gigabyte is a free Gigabyte.

In addition, if you have a Google account you can also get 1 GB of online photo storage space for via Picasa, with which you can create shareable online image galleries - this can be done straight from the Picasa desktop application.

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Microsoft gives you a generous free 25 GB online storage account called Windows Live SkyDrive, which is part of Microsoft's overall Windows Live environment. The only thing that is required is that you have a Windows Live ID; if you do not have that then it is very easy to sign up.

While 25 GB of free space is a nice amount of storage space, there are some drawbacks to Windows Live SkyDrive:

• No automated backups, so it is really only useful for storage and sharing


• No desktop client - you can only manually up- and download files via the web portal


• Uploading folders is not possible via the web portal interface (files only)


• There is a file size limit of 50 MB per file, so forget about uploading movies, large zip files, etc.


• Supported by advertising (third party) on the portal's pages, including those you share with family, friends and customers

Other than that, Windows Live SkyDrive, might be of use to you, especially if you're already using more of the Windows Live services Microsoft offers.

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I do not have a fancy looking logo for Jotta Backup because, ehm, they don't have one so what you see above is a screenshot of their homepage.

Jotta Backup is based in Norway so if you fancy yourself some nordic online backup tool that is free and stores you files in a data center in beautiful Oslo, then go fetch a Free 2 GB account.

The Jotta backup client is currently only available for Windows environments, and offers automated backup, file revisions, true archiving and many other features.

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If you're still wondering whether one of these online backup and storage services is useful to you, and if yes, which one to start with, I will make it a little easier by giving you a quick summary list of all of the free services discussed above for easy comparison.

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Please note that this is a living document and I will add more free online backup and storage services once I learn about them.

Vendor

Space Limit

Type

Mozy Home Free

2 GB

backup

Gygan

unlimited UP / 4 GB Down

storage, sharing

SpiderOak Free

2 GB

backup

IDrive Basic

2 GB

backup, storage, sharing

DropBox Basic

2 GB

sync, sharing

Google Docs

2 GB

storage, sharing

Microsoft SkyDrive

25 GB

storage, sharing

Jotta Backup

2 GB

backup, archiving

I hope that I have given you a decent overview of available free online backup and storage solutions. Give one of them a try and see what you think. If you decide you like the solution and want to use if as your backup, storage, archiving and sharing tool, then it typically is fairly easy to upgrade from a free account to a paid account.

Please remember that this is a list in progress and that the list will be updated with new entries regularly.