Online hard drives, also known as cloud storage, is a popular option to backup your files. With the advances in storage technology and Internet technology, the demand for file synchronization between personal multiple devices continues to grow. In the meantime, the development of distributed computing, parallel computing, and grid computing has boosted and extend the service for online cloud storage, making it into Software As A Service (SAAS).
A virtual hard drive is usually operated by enormous network computing programs, automatically split into numerous smaller pieces, and then returns the result to the end-user by complex computational analysis from multiple servers. A service provider can process tens of millions or even billions of data in a few seconds. This kind of storage is a device integrated with software functions, which not only provides data storage capabilities, but also provides applications that can be considered as a collection of servers and storage devices.
There are several advantages for online cloud storage:
1) Ease of management
This one can be summarized as a cost advantage. Because most of the data migration to cloud upgrade and maintenance are operated by cloud service providers. The cloud service provider are able to meet the demands of business owners. It is easy for customers to operate from several different perspectives for personal and business usage.
2) Low cost
The cost of data management paid by the enterprise is quite huge and this cost still expands with data storage. Many companies are in a high risk of data loss and they prefer not to protect data safety to bring down the data cost. However, they can save their data on their cloud servers in data centers, reducing the high cost of traditional data storage. The development of application and storage technology can significantly reduce the number of servers in the cloud storage, therefore making the system infrastructure cost-down.
3) Flexibility
Online hard drives can be specially designed and tailored for any requested customer or any requested IT organizations. The infrastructure of online hard drives not only provides flexibility and high quality service to business users, but also reduces security risks of file storage and transfer.
There are also some disadvantages for online cloud storage as well:
1) Broadband bandwidth
The broadband bandwidth is likely to be one of the biggest obstacles for cloud storage becoming popular. The average of data growth to an end-user has been exploded from 100MB to more than 1TB. The gradual expansion of bandwidth gap has made the cloud storage more feasible to the digital world.
2) Security and availability
There is a lack of connectivity between files on data storage and related cloud infrastructure. Within the cloud, the data storage is in any form of encryption, so the key should be well kept. Otherwise, the data may get lost or damaged if the key cannot be encrypted.
In the end, the benefits of having an online hard drive outweighs the disadvantages and you should consider using it as a means for backing up your personal and business files.
