Dropbox, Sugarsync, SkyDrive, Google Drive - Build a Cloud Nest!!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been looking around for suggestions and tools on syncing google drive and dropbox. SkyDrive offers 25GB, so I thought, why the hassle of maintaining so many of these. The problem statement is that of - How can I have just one copy of my files, but have so many services backing up my files. Right now, all I have is about 5GB of stuff…

One suggestion was to place Dropbox folder inside Google Drive or the other way around. I tried it out, but I got a “System Folder” error. So I tried the other way around of placing Google Drive Folder inside Dropbox and it worked. Now add SkyDrive into the equation. Make SkyDrive folder as the master folder under which you have Dropbox which contains Google Drive. Do you want to make your virtual life even more difficult, throw SugarSync into the fray. All SugarSync needs is a file location and it backs up your computer contents.

What are the various steps if you were to start from scratch? 1. Install SkyDrive app first (Leave the recommended settings as is) 2. Install Dropbox app next and select advanced settings to select the folder. (Choose the SkyDrive folder) 3. Install Google Drive app and choose Dropbox folder as your install folder. 4. Install SugarSync app and select the SkyDrive folder for syncing (You can actually choose any of the cloud drives)

Advantages of the nested cloud 1. Never bother about individually syncing each of your cloud services 2. Each cloud drive has several backups of your version 3. Google Drive and SkyDrive let you create documents on the move 4. Dropbox and Picasa lets you upload pictures from your camera and is easy to share as well. (Dropbox upgrades your folder space when you upload pictures from your camera, 500MB at a time) 5.

Disadvantages of the nested cloud 1. 5GB is all you get for free (since that is the lowest common denominator of the services) 2. You are losing out on cumulative storage (Dropbox - 2GB (default), SkyDrive - 7GB, Google Drive - 5GB, SugarSync - 5GB, Total - 19GB, with referrals and tricks, you can reach 40GB of distributed cloud space) 3. 4 syncing apps on your desktop can slow your computer down considerably 4. Multi-computer sync can be messy

In conclusion, I really like my nested cloud setup. My recommendation is that people who want it all, but want minimum hassles, please adopt the above mentioned method, else you can also try services like zeropc.com.