Cloud Storage: How to Store Files With Dropbox

Cloud storage is an important safety measure for your critical files, and most cloud storage apps provide file sharing capability. My favorite tool is Dropbox, which I’ve been using for years. I first posted about Dropbox back in 2016, when this post was originally written. It is the easiest to use of all of the cloud storage apps I’ve used (and that’s quite a few).

I use Dropbox every day for storing files, and for sharing them with others. Sometimes it’s just too big to send via email. I also love having my files with me everywhere I go. The app is free for desktop, phone and tablet. Dropbox gives you free storage, so if you don’t have large files you may be able to keep the free plan.

Why Cloud Storage is Vital

Here’s a story that will help you understand why it’s so important. When my oldest daughter went to college, she went with a new MacBook. As an art major, she had Adobe applications and files on her computer that she had created for a graphic design course. We also bought her an external hard drive, and advised her to keep a backup in a cloud storage account.

I bet you know what’s coming. Like most college students, setting up a Dropbox account and adding files didn’t seem too exciting and she never found the time to do it. One night a friend (?) spilled an entire can of Red Bull (mixed with ??? — we’ll never know) on her keyboard. You guessed it, the computer was ruined. The friend bought her a new computer, but she lost all of her art projects. It broke my heart, but it could so easily have been prevented.

Computers, especially laptops, get lost, damaged, or stolen every day. So do external hard drives. I once thought I had lost 20 years’ worth of digital family photos because of an external hard drive failure. The least expensive company I could find online to try to recover the data was going to charge me $900. I cried in that poor sales guy’s ear. Loudly and ugly. Thankfully, I later found the files in a — you guessed it — cloud storage account I had forgotten about.

The last time I got a new MacBookPro, the only thing I had to do to set it up was log in to Apple, Google, and Adobe, and download my Creative Suite apps. All of my files were in Dropbox, and once I signed in and installed…