A Quick Review of the New Windows Live SkyDrive Online Storage

One of the betas of the new Windows Live series of programs and web services I hadn’t yet taken the time to try out was the SkyDrive service. SkyDrive is a web-based backup service that allows you to save your important files to Microsoft’s online storage.

These files can be made so that only you can access them (and then only when logged in with your Windows Live account), or else you can set different user privileges, so that certain people can access them (but only with a password), or so that anyone, anywhere, can access them.

Anyone who signs up for a Windows Live account (and if you already use Hotmail, you already have one), is given a free 500 MB of online storage for their SkyDrive account. This isn’t a ton of storage as far as those type of things go, but based on the high level of competition between Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other online companies, I think it likely that once SkyDrive leaves the beta stage it’s currently in, this 500 MB will expand to 1 GB at least, and possibly more.

If you’ve never used your SkyDrive before, you will be happy to know that there’s nothing you have to install to use it. Simply go to the SkyDrive page (http://skydrive.live.com), and log in to your Windows Live account. You’ll see that there is currently nothing available in your storage, but that there are four folders already set up for you, mimicking the folders on your hard drive. They are labeleled “Videos” “Documents” and “Pictures” and “Music” and are included in your Personal folders area. These folders will always be password protected, and visible only to you.

There are also two other, initially empty, areas. One is called Shared Folders. Anything uploaded to your Shared Folders area will be visible to anyone that you have tagged as a “Friend” but not to anyone else. Finally, there is a space called Public Folders. As the name might suggest, this area is visible by anyone.