Psst.. wanna free hard drive? Go to Xdrive on the Internet at http://www.xdrive.com and they'll give you 25 megabytes for free. No strings attached. Use your Xdrive account 10 times and they'll add another 10 megabytes. Use it to store what you will: pictures, MP3 files, important documents, the Great American Novel. Use it to do a backup.
Tell 'em a user by the name of 'wilgus' sent you, and they'll give me 5 megabytes too. Once you sign up, you can, of course, invite your own friends, and for each one who joins up, they'll give you an additional 5 megabytes. But, you say, 25 megabytes isn't enough. Okay, make your way to NetDrive at http://www.netdrive.com and they'll give you 100 megabytes for free-that's right, totally and completely free-just for signing up.
The first computer I ever owned had no hard drive, merely 1 megabyte of RAM to load the OS and whatever programs would fit in the space left over (not much!). The second computer I owned had a 100 megabyte hard drive, and that was way cool. Times have changed.
Still not enough space for you? How about 300 megabytes at MySpace? Pay a visit to http://www.freediskspace.com and be prepared to fill out out a questionnaire. Are you an MP3 fan needing a place to store your MP3 files? How about 1 gigabyte of free space? It's out there.
In fact, there are many Internet hard drives out there available free of charge, yours for the asking. Even Yahoo! has a briefcase feature offering about 5 megabytes or so of free storage. If you've got a Yahoo! account, all you need to do is click on their briefcase link (on any of their pages) and they'll get you signed up and going.
There are all sorts of uses for an Internet hard drive: u A backup solution for important files that you want to make sure survive any hard disk or computer crash you might sufferu Storage of files that you work on at both home and at work-as long as you have Internet access on both ends, this is good way to get rid of the floppy-carrying routine. For people on the go, working in a variety of settings or situations, this can be a godsend, especially for those who do not carry a laptop everywhere they go (or who don't necessarily want to).
One use springs to mind particularly relevant to newspapers and writers: that of File Depot. Reporters for the Bangkok Post routinely go through a complicated procedure to send in their stories by telephone wire, and they don't always arrive in good form. It would be better to have an Internet hard drive where the stories could be uploaded, quickly and easily, and available to anyone needing to retrieve them.
Surely other businesses face this dilemma, and resort to sending documents around by email or on disk by courier. It would all be much simpler to log in to a Web site and have the stories immediately available for downloading.
Of the sites mentioned above, NetDrive has been, in my experience, the easiest to use, the fastest and the most reliable. The 300 megabyte drive promises more than it delivers. The interface is clunky, and uploading and downloading files can be troublesome. For that particular drive, I've discovered that Microsoft Internet Explorer doesn't always work correctly-attempting to download can freeze up the machine.
Netscape doesn't seem to have any troubles. But it also seems to depend on whether you are using Windows 98 or Windows NT, so it could be a security precaution somewhere in the operating system that is preventing the browser from accessing the hard disk. Then again, perhaps not: certain browsers work, others don't. I haven't had the patience to make any sense of it.
Both NetDrive and Xdrive are fairly straight-forward, and uploads and downloads are easy enough to accomplish. NetDrive has the advantage of more space and slightly more features, and 100 megabytes is certainly a lot of space where you are just transferring text files back and forth. With all of these, you can create your own folders and files, and with some you can preview files, like photographs. Also on offer are public and private spaces, so you can make some of your files public-for anyone to come along and see-while keeping others private.
In order to view your public files, visitors will usually need to have their own account. For NetDrive, visitors can visit your specific URL and view your public files there. When I searched the Internet for "Internet free hard disk space" I came up with about a dozen Internet hard disks offering anywhere from 20 to 300 megabytes of space, all free of charge. No doubt there are many more.
Some included the option to download a special piece of software to make your transfers easier. Most reward you with more space for getting others to sign up. Some allow you to purchase extra space, should you require it.
You needn't tell them that I sent you (there's surely a conflict of interest in there somewhere). But if you are in need of an extra hard disk, or even just some space to store important documents you don't want to lose track of, then give one of these Internet hard drives a try.
The question that keeps popping into my mind is, Why? Aside from showing me a few ads here and there, how do these companies benefit by giving away free disk space?The only conclusion that I can come to is that, in the US at least, to have your Internet company listed on the stock exchange, you need at least 2 million users. Thats the magic number. To have 2 million customers at your fingertips is a pretty powerful thing.
I suspect companies that give away Internet access are operating on this same principle: they have other goals in mind than just trying to make money off each user. Building a solid base of customers to sent advertisements to, and to offer other services, is probably what it's all about.
Email Nick Wilgus at [email protected]