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Does anyone know of good online storage? Could you please include any limits the site has, such as max file size, bandwidth limits, and any costs (though free would be preferred).

Exactly what i am looking for: Site to upload files (~1GB), and share the link with friends to download.

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closed as off topic by Gareth, Nifle, random♦ Sep 27 '11 at 2:28

Questions on Super User are expected to generally relate to computer software or computer hardware, within the scope defined in the faq.

15 Answers

up vote 20 down vote accepted

While I don't use it(*), I know a lot of people like Dropbox.

  • Drag and drop interface
  • SSL and AES encryption
  • Reasonable pricing (I think :-))

(*)I personally don't use any specific backup. My data mostly lives in Gmail or GitHub if it can't be replaced easily.

Edit (by a dropbox user, not original poster): It gives two gigabytes free, so you don't need to pay anything to store your 1GB of files.

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Beat me to it. A major plus of dropbox is the unlimited bandwidth. – PiPeep Jul 31 '09 at 16:06
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Dropbox is awesome. – The How-To Geek Jul 31 '09 at 18:51
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It also supports Windows, Mac and Linux. Nice one! – Lars Haugseth Jul 31 '09 at 22:04
And it allows you to share the files using a simple public URL. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun Nov 9 '09 at 14:18
@PiPeep - Bandwidth is unlimited ONLY for "PRO" users. (I.E. you are a paid customer.) If you use the free edition, you'll have a limit on your Dropbox. – Shiki Aug 13 '11 at 18:24
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up vote 7 down vote

Microsoft Windows SkyDrive offers free online storage for all of your desktop files, photos and documents.

alt text

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Wow, 25GB of free space is a lot... – Sasha Chedygov Jul 31 '09 at 20:32
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I agree, but I wish the per file size was bigger. – JP. Jul 31 '09 at 22:57
I wish they'd give an option to purchase additional space – Shaihi Mar 13 '11 at 12:12
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up vote 4 down vote

Here is a great chart of available options: http://lifehacker.com/5064688/free-online-storage-feature+by+feature-comparison-chart

I use dropbox for little stuff, but with ADrive you can get 50GB free (without the desktop app).

You can also use TrueCrypt to secure your data before you upload it to ADrive.

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+1 for the true crypt tip. I use it with Dropbox. Table's old and inaccurate, but one can just follow links. – Adam Matan Jul 31 '09 at 21:47
doesnt +1 mean you gave an upvote? – Kells Aug 6 '09 at 17:51
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up vote 1 down vote

JungleDisk, which is primarily an online backup mechanism, can be used for drive-letter access to your online files.

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up vote 1 down vote

Syncplicity is quite good.

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up vote 1 down vote

There are at least three services from Microsoft:

Windows Live Mesh is similar to Dropbox, but allows synchronizing more than one folder. You get 5 GB of space. (But so far it's limited to Windows (and IIRC, Mac OS X).)

Windows Live Sync is another such service (though I haven't tested it and don't know the differences between it and Mesh).

And Krish already mentioned Windows Live SkyDrive.

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May I suggest caution in the use of the Windows Live services? I'm just looking at the fact that they have 3 services with overlapping functionality. I suspect they are throwing stuff up against the wall to see if it sticks. Make sure you have backups elsewhere, as I'll bet money that at least 2 of these services are going to die in the next couple of years. – Michael Kohne Nov 9 '09 at 14:26
Good call Michael. Live Sync is dead. However, it never offered online storage, so it didn't belong in this answer anyway. – Andrew Jan 25 '11 at 22:20
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up vote 1 down vote

Strange, that no one mentions Wuala.
I've been using it on my computers for a while. It's written in Java, multi-platform. You get 1gb for free.
However, you can "trade" storage on your own PC. (Or buy additional space, which is really cheap.)

Trade guide, from their website:

Wuala allows you to trade idle local disk space on your computer for online storage. As an example, you could trade 100 GB on your computer and get up to 100 GB of additional online storage in return. You get whatever you provide on your computer multiplied by your online time. In the example above, you would get 70 GB of additional online storage if you're online 70% of the time. Clearly, this doesn't give you extra storage, but it changes the quality of your storage - you can access your files from anywhere, make an off-site backup, and easily share files among friends and in groups. There is only one requirement you have to fulfill in order to be able to trade storage:

  • You need to be online for at least 4 hours a day.
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up vote 0 down vote

I think that it deppends of your desire. If only store files to take another time, dropbox or 4shared.

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up vote 0 down vote

You could use Amazon's S3 service that allows unlimited storage and is very cheap. The downside is you have to pay for each transfer (up and down) and I'm not sure if you can share individual links with others.

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up vote 0 down vote

I really like Sugarsync.

2GB is free. You can only backup & sync up to two computers with the free Plan.

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up vote 0 down vote

TransferBigFiles.com: completely free, up to 1 GB files, don't need to login, really easy.

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up vote 0 down vote

who.hasfiles.net gives 100 MB of storage accessible through WebDAV. (SSL is available, but not for free.)

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up vote 0 down vote

There is a nice comparison of file hosting services in Wikipedia.

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I'm curious why this got a downvote? The OP wanted to know about file hosting services, the poster pointed him to an external resource that lists file hosting services, and is reasonably updated. What's the problem? – Michael Kohne Nov 9 '09 at 14:28
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up vote -1 down vote

Dropbox is the best solution

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up vote -2 down vote

Honestly, you can get reasonable service by just buying a domain name and hosting from a site like godaddy.com. The hosting is quite reasonable, and you can set it up however you want.

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i do have my own site that i use for storage of smaller files, but sharing large files with a bunch of friends eats through my bandwidth – Petey B Jul 31 '09 at 15:54
Um, why would godaddy.com be a good alternative? Dropbox and other services offer free storage (usually a limit around 2GB) and can share with other users or give access to friends and family. How is godaddy a good if not better alternative to doing what the OP wants? – osij2is Jul 31 '09 at 16:15
I wasn't comparing to dropbox, just suggesting a possibility. And it depends on what kind of bandwidth / reliability he needs. He said the files are 1GB, but not how many of them he wants to share, with how many people, or how quickly they should be able to download them. – sangretu Jul 31 '09 at 19:37
Lots of hostsers have TOS stipulations against using their webspace for hosting files other than what will be available on their site. – Nathan Adams Feb 24 '10 at 15:45
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