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Best cloud storage for students?

D

drewjonn

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 15, 2016
139
30
Using a flash drive apparently isn't convenient enough (or fancy) and that made me realize that maybe subscribing in a cloud storage is a good idea.

I mainly store Microsoft Office files (Excel, Word, and PPT documents) but maybe some extra space for films doesn't hurt. I don't know if Microsoft One Drive is good enough, I am sure there are plenty of better cloud storages out there.

I'd also prefer a cloud storage which has a feature so user can password every single file or folder. and it'd be great if the storage allows me to organize my files neatly.

Tell me what you guys think ;)
 
As a student you should see what your school offers. Many schools give you an Office 365 account for free. Not only does that give you all the MS apps, but usually up to 1GB of space.
 
AlliFlowers said:
As a student you should see what your school offers. Many schools give you an Office 365 account for free. Not only does that give you all the MS apps, but usually up to 1GB of space.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I got the Office 365 for free but I don't think I receive enough space for the cloud, OneDrive itself initially doesn't have any plans with big enough capacity and 1GB is seriously way too small. The cloud needs to be at least 100GB for me to be able to store most of my documents.
 
OP wrote:
"Using a flash drive apparently isn't convenient enough (or fancy) and that made me realize that maybe subscribing in a cloud storage is a good idea."

I would also like to suggest that NOTHING beats having an immediately-accessible, finder-mountable backup close-at-hand for when you need something right away.

I recommend creating a bootable cloned backup of your internal drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Then you will have a backup drive that (when you connect it) mounts directly in the finder. You can copy one file, a group of files, or even 're-clone" the entire backup back to your internal (leaving you with an identical copy of "where your internal was" at the time of the last cloned backup).

By all means, set up a cloud backup if you like.
But again, it's good to have a "physical backup" within "hand's reach", as well!
 
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AlliFlowers said:
Seriously? That's a LOT of documents. I have everything, including two years of lesson plans and tests, and student submissions in my One Drive, and I don't come close to 1GB.
Click to expand...

I still hope that you've been mistaking 1TB with 1GB honestly. but well, anything that serves you good. Even the free storage capacity in Google Drive is 15GB. Dropbox's might be less generous with free storage, but still, it is even 2GB.
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Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"Using a flash drive apparently isn't convenient enough (or fancy) and that made me realize that maybe subscribing in a cloud storage is a good idea."

I would also like to suggest that NOTHING beats having an immediately-accessible, finder-mountable backup close-at-hand for when you need something right away.

I recommend creating a bootable cloned backup of your internal drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Then you will have a backup drive that (when you connect it) mounts directly in the finder. You can copy one file, a group of files, or even 're-clone" the entire backup back to your internal (leaving you with an identical copy of "where your internal was" at the time of the last cloned backup).

By all means, set up a cloud backup if you like.
But again, it's good to have a "physical backup" within "hand's reach", as well!
Click to expand...

Well, I only said that it could be a great idea to subscribe for online storage but never mentioned that I would dump all of my flash drive usages ;)

Anyways, a little bit out of topic though. :D
 
I'm 30 years old and I have documents from the 90s in my Windows 95 days. I'm a hobbyist writer too and all my documents (when converted to docx) amount to about 400MB (mostly because of attached pictures). All my backed up college data is in the low single digit gigs.

A lot of schools offer Google Apps or Office 365. Even if not, $1.99/mo on Google gives you 100GB.

I went 100% cloud based in 2011 to Google Drive. Now that my internet isn't as reliable as it used to be, I've switched back to local storage and using SpiderOak as a "backup" sycning a few folders between my laptop and desktop.
 
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kindaHipster said:
I still hope that you've been mistaking 1TB with 1GB honestly. but well, anything that serves you good. Even the free storage capacity in Google Drive is 15GB. Dropbox's might be less generous with free storage, but still, it is even 2GB.
Click to expand...

Have you actually looked at the size of your documents? Unless you're including photos and music (which you did not mention), then you may be well overestimating your needs. And yes, I certainly know the difference between a gigabyte and a terabyte.
 
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AlliFlowers said:
Have you actually looked at the size of your documents? Unless you're including photos and music (which you did not mention), then you may be well overestimating your needs. And yes, I certainly know the difference between a gigabyte and a terabyte.
Click to expand...

Lol sorry I literally didn't mean that you had no idea about the difference :D

kindaHipster said:
I mainly store Microsoft Office files (Excel, Word, and PPT documents) but maybe some extra space for films doesn't hurt.
Click to expand...

I just find it nice to be able to store all my files in one place, as long as there is backup just in case. That, you don't have to get confused finding datas that are scattered.

A season in HD would buy at least 8GB of storage haha. Also some PPT documents may contain photos or videos which may significantly bulk its size.
 
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BigMcGuire said:
I'm 30 years old and I have documents from the 90s in my Windows 95 days. I'm a hobbyist writer too and all my documents (when converted to docx) amount to about 400MB (mostly because of attached pictures). All my backed up college data is in the low single digit gigs.

A lot of schools offer Google Apps or Office 365. Even if not, $1.99/mo on Google gives you 100GB.

I went 100% cloud based in 2011 to Google Drive. Now that my internet isn't as reliable as it used to be, I've switched back to local storage and using SpiderOak as a "backup" sycning a few folders between my laptop and desktop.
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about Google Drive since it's rather cheap, also the Apple iCloud since I only use OS X and iOS. Sometimes you get what you pay for, with such a cheap plan I'm still trying to figure out if they offer good features. Anyway, has Google Drive serve you well and reliably within these 5 years?
 
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kindaHipster said:
I've been thinking about Google Drive since it's rather cheap, also the Apple iCloud since I only use OS X and iOS. Sometimes you get what you pay for, with such a cheap plan I'm still trying to figure out if they offer good features. Anyway, has Google Drive serve you well and reliably within these 5 years?
Click to expand...

Yep, I liked it a lot. Then again, I'm a huge google fan (with an iPhone). Our internet, lately, has become crap thanks to Frontier taking over Verizon FIOS so... I've gone back to local file storage and went with SpiderOak for security / backup of local folders.

I definitely recommend Google Drive. I still use it and it's great for school. OneDrive isn't far behind but Google Drive has Google Docs/Spreadsheets and can export to XLSX or DOCX if needed.

Never had a complaint with Google Drive.
 
I have used and evaluated cloud drive services for well over a decade. Foldershare was the first viable one. Microsoft bought them and morphed them into their OneDrive solution.

I currently have subscriptions to Google Drive (15GB - used up completely by my mail); OneDrive 1TB with Office 365, iCloud (200GB), Amazon Prime (don't really use) and Dropbox 5TB/Unlimited (1.6 TB used - this is a business subscription $795/yr 5 users).

When MS began changing FolderShare for the worse, I had to find another solution. After significant work evaluating performance, features, and data integrity - DropBox came out on top.

I run my business on Dropbox. Very reliable. Lots of biz oriented features. No file size limit. This is very useful when backing up 35-40GB virtual machines to the cloud. Replaces the need for FTP sites and much more. Works on all devices.

I recommend you try the free version and if you need more space or need the features - then get the pro version ($99/yr).

DB has some compelling features and is rock solid. They can still improve. They need to refocus on their core.
 
Don't forget Amazon. Enterprise grade, about as trustworthy as cloud storage gets. 5GB free, pay for what you use after that.

For those on a no budget-budget.....you might consider Mega. 50GB for free is hard to beat.

Downside? Like many companies, who knows what their future is? Outside of the giants (Amazon, Google, MS, Apple, etc.) one should always use caution with cloud based anything. One needs physical possession.

It could be argued the same logic applies to all subscription services.

Still, services like Mega can be useful for redundant backups, web access and sharing, disaster recovery.
 
I'm gonna tag this on the end of this thread because it's relevant and a new thread doesn't seem necessary.

Can I trust OneDrive? My university provides all students with Office 365 and 1Tb of OneDrive storage. I've decided I want to use OneNote on my MacBook Pro to take all of my lecture notes as it seems to be a powerful note taking tool. However, on 365 for Mac you cannot create a local backup of Notes taken in OneNote, all notes are kept and synced in OneDrive. What are the chances that one day OneDrive suddenly decides to wipe all of my notes and everything is gone forever - for whatever reason? Is there a backup solution I've not yet found which could protect me from this? Is OneDrive a pretty safe Cloud storage solution and all of my notes should be safe up there?

Anyone with experience of the platform? It's been a long time since I've used Microsoft's products, student email is also done via 365.
 
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JarScott said:
I'm gonna tag this on the end of this thread because it's relevant and a new thread doesn't seem necessary.

Can I trust OneDrive? My university provides all students with Office 365 and 1Tb of OneDrive storage. I've decided I want to use OneNote on my MacBook Pro to take all of my lecture notes as it seems to be a powerful note taking tool. However, on 365 for Mac you cannot create a local backup of Notes taken in OneNote, all notes are kept and synced in OneDrive. What are the chances that one day OneDrive suddenly decides to wipe all of my notes and everything is gone forever - for whatever reason? Is there a backup solution I've not yet found which could protect me from this? Is OneDrive a pretty safe Cloud storage solution and all of my notes should be safe up there?

Anyone with experience of the platform? It's been a long time since I've used Microsoft's products, student email is also done via 365.
Click to expand...

Using OneDrive for over a year where I work (university in CA) for the entire campus. Been good. A few quirks with the Mac client.....which was beta waaaaaaaay too long, but it seems solid now.

I feel about the same level of confidence as most any of the big brand cloud solutions: their odds of serious data loss are much lower than a SMB or even what small enterprise can afford to run. But, for any mission critical data, local backup/control/access is a must. And some data is too sensitive to put in any cloud system......so it really depends on you and the data.

For me, low cost cloud is a great place for near line backups, archives, and sharing features.
 
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I also have unlimited storage for $14/month on my web server with Godaddy, though the maximum file size is 250MB and it's not that snappy. Still useful for keeping a dump of useful files accessible from anywhere you can get an internet connection.
 
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