Personal Cloud Storage is a network attached storage to store your photos, videos, data, and other files. Cloud storage is an ideal solution for those who need a storage space that can access from anywhere on any device. When thinking about cloud storage, most people may think about a network of servers for storing their data and can be accessed over the internet. There is some trusted cloud service like Dropbox offers reliable cloud storage service at a minimum cost. Now different companies offer personal cloud storage device to store files with remote access.
There are some advantages of personal cloud storage over traditional server-based cloud storage service. The main advantage is speed, as you are using your own hardware you can access your files at a few hundred Mbps speed. But in server-based cloud storage, the speed depends on your internet connection speed. Another important feature is, personal cloud storage offers more privacy than a hosted solution. The disadvantages are you need to purchase your own hardware for setting up your own personal cloud storage. Hosted cloud servers use high end biometrically protected datacenters, and uses different servers across the globe to clone the data across the servers for better protection. You can also use hosted servers to create your own personal cloud storage using cloud server scripts.
Public Cloud Storage
There are a number of public cloud services offers cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud. They also offer several gigabytes of free storage, Google drive offers 15GB free storage space, iCloud offers 5GB, Dropbox offers 2GB free storage.
Dropbox
(https://www.dropbox.com)
Dropbox offers 2 GB of free storage, you can access and share photos, documents, and files from any device. You can install the desktop app to see everything in your Dropbox account on the Dropbox folder of your computer. You can access and preview over 175 file types from anywhere using the Dropbox mobile app.
Google Drive
(https://www.google.com/drive/ )
Using Google Drive you can store, share and access your files from any device. You will get 15 GB of free storage. You can keep photos, videos, and files in your Google account and can access from smartphone, tablet or computer.
Apple iCloud
(https://www.icloud.com/)
iCloud is a personal storage solution from Apple. You can use your Apple ID or can create a new account to start using Apple iCloud service. You can store, photos, notes, videos and files in the free 5GB iCloud storage space. You can add more space to it at any time. The iCloud Photo Library helps you to browse, search and share all the photos and videos from any of your devices. iCloud Drive helps to organize your files with folders, rename them and tag them with colors. When you make a change, the update is made across all your devices.
Self Hosted Cloud Solutions
OwnCloud
(https://owncloud.org/)
Owncloud is a client-server solution for share, sync and organizes your files under your control. You can sync files at home or work with a desktop client. OwnCloud offers a variety of installation options. You can get OwnCloud’s ready-to-deploy packages for popular Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and openSUSE. OwnCloud is also offered by a lot of hosting providers.
Seafile
(https://www.seafile.com)
Seafile is self-hosted open source cloud hosting solution with file sync and sharing feature with good performance and reliability. Seafile organizes files into libraries, each library can be synced into any desktop computer working in Windows, Mac, and Linux. Libraries and folders can be shared to users or groups, with read-only or read-write permissions. Files can access using Android and iOS devices. The community edition is free and the price for the free edition is free for up to 3 users.
Nextcloud
(https://nextcloud.com/)
Nextcloud is a self-hosted platform for storing and syncing your files and data. Nextcloud can run on the server and can access from your desktop or mobile devices.
Cozy
(https://cozy.io)
Cozy provides free open source cloud storage solution across different platforms.
Pydio
(https://pydio.com)
Pydio is open-source software deployed on your servers to create your own cloud server platform. You can centralize your files and access your files from any device.
Resilio
(https://www.resilio.com/)
You can sync photos, videos, music, PDFs, docs or any other file types to or from your mobile phone, laptop, or NAS using P2P technology. You can send photos, videos, or any other large file directly to anybody. It syncs every folder automatically to all your devices, to sync, just add a folder to it and it automatically becomes available on all your linked devices.
Tonido Server
(https://www.tonido.com/)
You can set up your personal cloud with Tonido. It allows you to access all your files on your computer from a web browser, smartphone, tablet or with a DLNA enabled devices. All you want to do is install the Tonido Server software and your computer becomes a private cloud server.
Personal Cloud Devices
Western Digital My Cloud
(Western Digital Store)
You can quickly set up your personal cloud with MyCloud home device. Just plug the device into your Wi-Fi router, then use your mobile phone or tablet to visit mycloud.com/hello, to set up your account. Now you can share, access and backup files. You can use My cloud home mobile app, desktop app or mycloud.com to upload, access and share your files. You can organize it and can access anywhere through an internet connection using Gigabit Ethernet. You can purchase the device from 2Tb to 8 TB or more. My cloud mirror devices offer mirror mode (RAID 1), that saves everything twice offers more protection. In My Cloud Mirror dual hard drives are set to Mirror Mode (RAID 1), that automatically duplicates the centralized content twice for better data backup protection.
There is a list of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices available. Seagate’s personal cloud home media storage device is useful to build a home personal cloud storage network. QNAP and Synology disk station offers replaceable hard drive based storage solution.
The main advantage of this type of personal cloud storage device is you have full authority on your data, you know where is your data (in cloud service you don’t know its location of storage), you know if someone had hacked your data, and you are sure that the data are stored safely in your premise. You can extend the storage by yourself.
