THE BEST (CLOUD) DEAL EVER !!!!

OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH !!!!!

Maybe a lot of you already know this, but I just discovered that I can use the FREE cloud service on Google Docs as my hard drive back up. You can too if you have a gmail account. Honestly, get one, even if you name it Johnsbackup@gmail.com  (ok, there's probably a nomenclature restriction, but you get the point.)

ANYWAY. 15Gb of cloud storage. Free.

So what you say? For one thing it's Free. My C****** (famous name brand) backup subscription just expired, and given our current circumstances, I just could not justify spending $60 on a year's subscription. (I know, it's really awful leaving it to chance, even worse because I used to do Computer Disaster Prevention and Recovery for a living.)

 I happen to be watching a YouTube tutorial on GoogleDocs (hey, it was better than sitting outside tonight in the cold, watching a ballet performance, outdoors, at Long Beach State.) It's by Anson Alexander and he's done a lot of them. This is the one I was watching, it's a basics one: http://youtu.be/lMqdex3KDQM.

Anyway, he got to the part about uploading a document. I thought, I wonder if I can upload more than just word or spreadsheet documents? 

So I uploaded one of my PAF (genealogy) files. Then I went over to my husband's computer and went on to GoogleDocs and downloaded that file. Then I went to PAF/Ancestral Quest and OPENED that file. Intact. No problems. All the data there!!!

I WAS SO STOKED !! (Can you tell?)

So then I went and uploaded my entire genealogy folder. Next I'm going to upload my entire Homeschooling and other important folders. Then I'm going to make my kids upload their folders (they all have their own gmail accounts) so I can delete them off my hard drive.

But what I am really looking forward to, is moving all my genealogy files into Google Drive. Moving them in to Google Drive means that any time I change one of them (adding data etc.), it will automatically sync them up on my cloud space. That is really really really cool. You may not think so, but I've lived through numerous computer hard drive crashes. To be able to easily restore/download a single file, or multiple files, rather than having to restore the entire system, is a really big deal. (Might not help you on the .exe files; this might be a clear advantage to the C***** name brand back up service.)

I could also mark a file as "shared", and share with someone, rather than emailing it as an attachment.

I'm not exactly sure yet how large the shared or uploaded file can be. In glancing through the web, I did see a blurb about not being able to view a file if it's 25Gb. Are you kidding? 25 GIGABYTES? (A far cry from the Apple-Lisa days of 256k!) Just kind of interesting, because I can't gmail a file if it's larger than 10Mb, so being about to share one of my larger PAF files without having to .zip it would be really nice.

Watch Anson's YT videos. They are really informative and easy to understand. Then start backing up your STUFF !!