Is there such thing as a "cloud" hard drive?

[Carson Dyle]

I'd love to keep a few files on a virtual drive that is accessible from any computer anywhere in the world with Internet access. These would be mostly small files like text files and spreadsheets that I typically keep on my home file server so that I can access them from any of my home computers. If they could be stored in the cloud, then I'd have access to them from anywhere, as well as when my server is down or is turned off.

Is there such a thing/service? To be useful, it would need to be completely transparent to the computer and the user and look exactly like any other local or mapped hard drive on the system. I would need drivers for Windows 7, 8, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008.

Edit: In retrospect, the cloud folder wouldn't need to actually appear as a separate lettered drive. A folder attached via mount point within the file system, such as within my Documents folder, would be sufficient.

 

[nenforcer]

Microsoft has SkyDrive, I'm not sure if its backwards compatible all they way to XP, but I believe it is since everything is stored in the cloud.

DropBox is the largest cloud storage service and should also support all of the OS's you mentioned.

 

[Binky]

I think lots of the cloud services have hacks available to "map" them as a drive letter. This would really just be synced folder(s) among all of the participants. Try a search for something like "map dropbox drive letter." It's pretty easy to do.

The only service that I can think of that maps to a fixed drive letter by default is jungledisk. I'm sure there are others.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I just took a quick look at SkyDrive and they also mention 'synced' folders. I'm not sure I understand what that means in terms of my understanding of what these services are supposed to offer. If the storage of the file is on the cloud service and never offline, what needs to be 'synced'?

 

[nickbits]

Changes/additions/deletions to files in the folder are sych'd to sky drive. Basically a program will watch your folders and make the same changes to the cloud folder. The mapping isn't as direct as you are thinking it is.

Also Dropbox and google drive are competitive services.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Ok, yeah, I just watched a Dropbox intro video and it makes a bit more sense now. Files are kept both locally and on the Dropbox server, then synced as necessary.

I'm not sure that was exactly what I was looking for, but I suppose there's some logic to it. This way, the files are accessible even when offline.

 

[Doomer]

Or you could go with a NAS that has has publish to web and FTP features.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I have FTP space on a public server. Is there a utility that can transparently treat FTP accessible files as if they were local?

 

[lamedude]

You can mount FTP sites in Windows.

 

[ch33zw1z]

pretty cool, lamedude. huh, that felt weird typing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Seagate GoFlex Home NAS HDD has "cloud" features. You can access it remotely through a web interface.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I've been playing with Dropbox. I guess I'm late to the party, but it's pretty damned handy. I've also been reading about some creative uses for it, such as storing application settings within he dropbox so that you can easily maintain the same settings across multiple PCs.

I'm going to take a look at the mounting of an FTP folder for music library storage. Some things just don't lend themselves to being duplicated across multiple computers/