The Cloud

[lankeela]

At the risk of running away to hide can anyone explain to me in non techi language what The Cloud is/does and how I can save any photos etc so I don't lose them. No good asking me anything technical so just need an easy to understand explanation.

[Zacs-Master]

Its a place on a remote server where you can store things. There are many.

[JimF]

The cloud is, basically, a catch-all term for IT systems which are not in your house.

If you have a OneDrive account, that gives you more storage space than you have on your own computer's hard drive. That's why it's in the cloud.

The world is moving more and more to this model.

[JimF]

The advantage of cloud computing is that it is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. That is why people store their nightly backups in the cloud - there would be little point in backing up all your work to local storage if your house burnt down or you were burgled, etc.

[Maydup]

Where are your photos at the moment? On your phone, on your computer? If we know which we can help you save them in the cloud. Then one day when you buy a new phone or computer you can log into them from the new device and from anywhere.

The cloud is a storage system that we can all access via our own password saving us having storage systems at home. A small level of storage is free, but you might need to pay if you have loads of photos to back up.

[lankeela]

Photos and documents on my laptop - how would I know if have a One Drive account? Assuming I don't. Not sure what a remote server is. That's the sort of thing I don't understand. I just need someone to tell me what buttons to press. My computer is a Samsung and I use google chrome if that's any help.

[woofgang]

Its a big shared hard drive in the sky....actually its not in the sky but based in huge buildings all over the world.

[Buenchico]

As Zacs says, storing files 'in the cloud' just means storing them on remote servers (= computers) that you connect to via the internet.

Some services are free to use up to a certain amount of storage space but you then pay for additional space. For example, Microsoft OneDrive gives you 5 GB of free storage but if you want more than that (up to 100 GB) it costs £1.99 per month. If you need even more storage (up to 1000 GB = 1 TB), you can either pay £5.99 per month or £59.99, with both of those offers also getting you a Microsoft 365 account:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage

Google Drive is more generous with the amount of free storage that you get, allowing you 15 GB.
https://www.google.com/intl/en_ng/drive/

There are many other services. Although I hate recommending PC World to anyone, their own cloud storage is frequently awarded "Best Buy" in the UK technical press. There's no free storage but you get a whopping 200 GB for £20 per year or ten times that amount (2 TB) for £40 per year:
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/cloud-642-commercial.html

[JimF]

"how would I know if have a One Drive account?"
You would have signed up for one, and it would appear as another drive in your explorer.

"Not sure what a remote server is."
It's a server that's not in your house / that you can't actually touch. That's what "remote" means.

"I just need someone to tell me what buttons to press."
Go here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage

Click Sign Up for Free and follow the instructions.

[Buenchico]

>>> Not sure what a remote server is

"remote" = "not in your house"
"server" = "a computer dedicated solely to storing and disseminating files"


>>> how would I know if have a One Drive account?

Although Microsoft try to get everyone tied into OneDrive through Windows 10, you still need to sign-up for an account to get one. (See my link above).

This explains how to actually use OneDrive (far better than Microsoft's own website does - but that's nothing unusual anyway!):
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-get-started-onedrive-windows-10

[Sunk]

If you primary take photos on your phone, you may be better using Google/Android or Apple iCloud. They will be better integrated into your phone’s Operating System.

[lankeela]

I've clicked sign up for free on the link and it says 'while you were away your files have frozen' so does that presumably mean I have signed up for it before at some point? I have clicked on it and it says it can take up to 24 hours to unfreeze my account. Will see what happens next!

[lankeela]

Ok its now showing me four boxes - three yellow ones that say Documents, Photos, Public and one grey box that says Personal Vault. All have 0 in them. This was from back in 2013 so presume that is as far as I got. So any ideas what I do now?

[Buenchico]

>>> If you primary take photos on your phone, you may be better using Google/Android or Apple iCloud

Agreed. If you store the images on an Android phone in 'Google Photos' (rather than in 'Gallery' or some other app), they're automatically[i uploaded to Google's cloud storage. e.g. if you take pictures on your phone and then log into Google Photos on your home computer, you'll find that your photos are already there.

Of course that doesn't help you back-up the 100,000 word novel that you've almost finished writing on your computer. So you [i]might] still need cloud storage (such as OneDrive) but my own preference would be to simply back up the novel to a USB pen drive.

[Buenchico]

>>> So any ideas what I do now?

See if my link at 1726 helps.

[lankeela]

I've had to give another password, and now it is saying I can't access it till 24th April.

[lankeela]

Now got a screen saying drag files here to upload but where do I drag them from?

[lankeela]

Now this is where I lose the plot! Why can't I just tell it to save everything on my computer?

[woofgang]

you can
1. if you have loads of storage
2 if you are convinced that your laptop will never be lost or stolen or fail unexpectedly

[douglas9401]

I used to use Picassa. Where did all that stuff go?

[CrapAtCryptics]

With the number of sites that have been hacked I store all my important stuff on memory sticks and rotate them around for backups.