With the proliferation of massive multi-gigabyte hard drives, you might wonder why anyone would need an online storage site and you'd be right. Online storage is something of a misnomer. You can certainly store files at these sites but with free storage usually topping out at 100MB, use of these sites as a drive extender is rather pointless.

On the other hand, if you don't have a laptop but do a lot of traveling, you can place files you think you might need on the site-- special documents, an itinerary, appointment calendar, etc.-- that might be useful on the trip. Also, many offer those features on-site and that leaves your storage free for specific files. Such sites have the advantage of allowing you to access them from any computer anywhere, as long as it has a dial-up connection.

Even if you don't do much traveling and have no need for the above, these sites allow you the ability to easily share files with family, friends or even business associates. A big drawback to e-mail is the size limitation most ISPs impose on e-mail messages. Many ISPs allow no more than 2MB; some systems don't have HTML capability and/or won't allow attachments.

All such restrictions make the sharing of files a chore that the online storage sites overcome.

However, sometimes even the best of intentions don't work as planned. I tested 3 sites and offer my experiences below:

Xdrive: www.xdrive.com

Of the 3 sites I tested, Xdrive was the most intuitive and easiest to use. With Xdrive, you begin with 25MB of storage which can be increased. Subscribe to their newsletter and you increase your storage, invite a friend who uses that invitation to join and again, you increase your storage. The increases are in 5MB increments and you can increase up to a maximum of 100MB of free storage. Beyond that, they have commercial services to which you can subscribe for larger amounts of storage should you find it necessary.

While the site is very intuitive and easy to use, uploading files was a major pain. These sites use advertising to subsidize the free storage; the kicker is how the advertising is implemented. In the case of Xdrive, in addition to numerous static ads on the page, advertising also comes in the form of a header that is constantly changing and updated. I have no objections to advertising at these sites but the ads should be unobtrusive and not interfere with the primary function for which these sites were designed.

Unfortunately, I found the constantly changing and updating header often disrupted my upload. The larger the upload, the longer it will take, especially on a 56K dial up and the greater the chance your connection will be disrupted, thereby causing you to have to begin the upload again. I also had someone test the site with a broadband DSL connection with the same results.

When you upload a file, Xdrive opens a small box with a progress message, alerting you to how much of the upload is complete. Unfortunately, it appears the constantly updating header interferes with this operation much as it does with the upload itself or, perhaps the two are related. Whatever the case, uploading files to Xdrive is a frustrating experience.

Idrive: www.idrive.com

Uploading files to Idrive is not the chore it is at Xdrive but Idrive is not at all intuitive. Once you enter your password and ID, you are taken to a page where it is immediately clear how to upload, at least that's how it appears. In fact, a link called "Upload" takes you directly to a page with the following choices, "Dropbox, Filo, Shared and Private." Unfortunately, the precise purpose of these choices is never made quite clear and if you wish to simply share a file with a friend, the exact methodology is mired in some obscure part of their help system which I never found.

On Xdrive there's no mistaking a button in their toolbar, "Share." With Idrive you do see a button marked send. It turns out, that was meant primarily for sharing files with other Idrive members. That's not completely clear until you actually attempt to send and when I did make that attempt I was taken to a screen that informed me this feature is not currently available.

It was a lot of work just getting that far, if something is not available, you would think they would post a message on their front page.

You can make online photo albums using Idrive but if it's as difficult to share access to the photo album as it is to share your files, I'd avoid it.

Others may have had success with Idrive but from me the only passing grade it gets is my recommendation to pass it by.

Driveway: www.driveway.com

Driveway is something of a happy medium between Xdrive and Idrive. It's not quite as intuitive as Xdrive but it's much easier to use than Idrive.

If you can't quite figure out the routine, Driveway's help file clears up any questions. The constantly changing ad banner is not on the web page as is the case with Xdrive but in a box that indicates your progress during an upload. It's unobtrusive and didn't interfere with a 4MB upload that was impossible to complete on Xdrive.

The site is well organized but it does take some time to familiarize yourself with how things are done. Driveway offers 25MB of online storage and offers additional space for various subscription rates.


I didn't test all the features at these sites. You need to go and check for yourself to see if the other features such as online photo albums are of any interest. Be sure to do some testing. They may not accept the photo format you wish to use and be sure, if such a feature interests you, that the photos can be captioned.

In conclusion, as I pointed above, you must realize these sites are not meant to be drive extenders so much as a means of sharing files as well as allowing you access to important files when you are traveling or away from your home computer. It would help if the sites were a little easier to use. Xdrive, scores very well in that regard and would receive a high recommendation from me if the uploads weren't hampered by what appears to be interference from a constantly changing banner ad.

My best recommendation is to test online storage sites for yourself to see which works best for you. If a site doesn't work for you, don't worry, just stop using it since you become unsubscribed from most sites after six months of non-use.