I hate CDs. Floppies were so much better—you could easily save onto the same one every few paragraphs. I’ll be knee-deep in goddam CDs when I start my next book.
So, someone at work told me about online storage space, which sounds ideal: I don’t lose my text if my computer and/or its hard drive dies; I don’t have to worry about goddam “one time only” CDs. And I can just have my publisher access the text, w/o having to e-mail it to them or get them CDs.
I use a Toshiba PC and MicroSoft Word. Can anyone recommend a good, easy-to-use, reliable online storage space?
I know nothing about online storage services, but if you’re looking for something analogous to floppies, have you considered USB flash drives? Here’s a link to some examples.
I can send you an invitation to Gmail, a web-based email address, whcih has 2+ GB of storage. You can periodically e-mail your document to yourself there, and provide your username and password to your publisher so they can get at it as well. Their attachement size limit od 10 MB, I think.
Haven’t used it, but I think this has been around a while: http://www.xdrive.com/
IIRC they used to give you free space, before the dot-com meltdown. Now it charges a fee.
I also recommend flash drives. Alternatively you could get a gmail account and mail yourself the document if they are under 10 megs.
I have heard people say nice things about filecloud. I personally have not used it. You could let the publisher have read only access I believe. http://www.filecloud.com/
Don’t you have a Web site, Eve? If so, you’re already renting storage space on the Web. You just need whoever set up your site to tell you how to copy things to and from it.
You may be able to get to it using these directions, but only if it’s set up in a way that allows it. If that doesn’t work, talk to your web site person, they’ll know how to get to it.
FYI: ‘FTP’ stands for “file transfer protocol”, which is a fancy way of saying “copying files to and from the Web.” (yes, all you techies, I know that isn’t exactly what FTP means, but for this conversation it’s fine!)
I would not recommend online storage unless you do backups up your work. These places tend to come and go, the latter usually quite suddenly.
As mentioned, USB Flash is very nice if you don’t have too much data. Small and easy to bring along. But if you’re talking about several CDs of data you might want to look into an external drive. These have become pretty cheap lately. You can choose betwee a drive with a Firewire or USB interace. Firewire is the way to go if this interface is already supported on you computer (probably not), or if your USB interface is version 1.1. Else, a USB 2.0. drive should do it for you.
It sounds like all you really need is something to periodically save your work in progess to, yes? If so, then 'll also recomend a USB flash drive. They are so easy to use, that I’m sure even you can do it (not that you’re dumb, or anything, but I remember a thread from some time ago where you lamented your lack of sophisticated computer klnowledge.)
There;s no need to install any software or drivers (so long as you have Windows XP…you SO ahve Windowx XP, don’t you>) You jsut plug it in, and voila, it shows up as a drive under My Computer, and you can save to it just liek a floppy from word, or whatever you use. You can write, re-write, delete, etc… as easy as you did on those old floppies.
Of course, I’m sure in your day the closeset thing to compuiter storage was leaving the abacus in the same position you left it in the night before, but us modern folk like these USB drives just fine.
Rentable Online Storage Space?
But… don’t they all leak? Your data will end up all damp and soggy with digital mildew, and you’ll have to throw it out anyway. Your jpegs will have their pixels run.
And finally the door will stick, and you’ll have to use your car jack to open the door, like Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs.
I’m sure this probably isn’t enough space and likely completely inadequate to your needs, but Yahoo give 30 meg with a free Yahoo account. They call it the “briefcase”, http://briefcase.yahoo.com .
I don’t like the idea of a flash drive—what if it breaks or gets lost? When I saved onto floppies, I would make three copies—two for home and one for work. I cannot lose this stuff.
My web site is public-accessible, and I don’t want my writing accessible! Also, it’s a five-page site for promoting my books, with no additional space on it.
I’ll check out xdrive, filecloud and websafe, thanks!
hehhehee, no, the part where you put the files wouldn’t be public-accessible. That just ain’t how it works. As far as no additional space, I can’t answer that, it depends on how it’s set up.
But any of those other thingies would work equally well. I just figured that if you were already paying for a web page that piggybacking a few files on it would save you the rental costs.
If it cannot get lost then you need to be sure that the online places are not the only place your data is backedup. As alien says they can go out of business with little notice. You can get multiple flash cards. They are cheaper than flopies on a $/Mbyte basis now. A 256 MByte drive is now about $35 that is about 175 floppies worth of data. 128Mbyte drives can be had for $17 get two for home and one for work.
Can you explain to me in “backwards five-year-old” words exactly what a flash drive is and how it works and where it plugs in and can I save onto it over and over again like an old floppy?
It plugs into the USB port of your computer. It will show up as drive on your computer. You can save to it over and over again just like a floppy but with a lot more space. I really think you will be much happier with this than online file space.
