Cheat Sheet: How To Get 124 GB in Free Online Storage
While PutPlace has a different take on backing up your digital life, there’s no denying that we’re in the online storage space. As such, we’re always keeping an eye on what other players are doing.
In the process of our research, we compiled a big spreadsheet that records, among other things, how much free storage space each service offers. We thought we’d share it with the world, in case you needed to store, like, every episode of The Simpsons online.
A few caveats: we ignored email services like Gmail, and any service that offered less than 250 MB of free storage. We found two services that offer theoretically unlimited storage. However, MediaFire limits file size to 100 MB per upload, and Omemo applies a peer-to-peer storage model that seems pretty complicated for the average Normal Human user.
For the record, here at PutPlace we offer 2 GB for free. Sign up now to join our exclusive beta program.
With no further ado, here’s the big list:
| Name of Site | Amount of Free Storage | Notes |
| 4Shared.com | 5 GB | |
| ADrive.com | 50 GB | |
| Agigforfiles.com | 1 GB | |
| Allmydata.com | 1 GB | |
| Badongo.com | 1 GB | |
| BigUpload.com | 2 GB | |
| Bonpoo! | 2 GB |
No music or |
| Box.net | 1 GB | Max file size 10MB |
| Depositfiles.com | 300 MB | |
| Diino | 2 GB | |
| Driveway | 2 GB | |
| Dropsend.com | 250 MB | 1 GB file size for transfer |
| Divshare | 5 GB | |
| DropBoks.com | 1 GB | Max file size 50MB |
| Elephant Drive |
1 GB |
90 MB max file |
| Esnips.com | 5 GB | Max file size 10MB/1 GB bandwidth/month |
| File Cache |
1.5 GB | Site is in German |
| Filecrunch.com | 250 MB | No sign up required for one-time use |
| File Factory |
300 MB | |
| Files Host.com |
500 MB | |
| Fileden.com | 1 GB | 5 GB bandwidth/month |
| Filesend.net | 300 MB | |
| Hotlinkfiles.com | 1 GB | Max file size 50 MB |
| Huddle.net | 1 GB | |
| iDrive | 2 GB | |
| JustFreeSpace.com | 500 MB | |
| The Linkup |
2 GB | Formerly MediaMax |
| MediaFire | Unlimited | Max File Size 100MB |
| Megashares.com | 10 GB | |
| Mozy | 2 GB | |
| My Fabrik | 1 GB | |
| My Virtual Disk |
5 GB | Open only to Permission Research members |
| Omemo | Somewhat unlimited; peer-to-peer storage space |
Requires software download; Windows only |
| Omnidrive | 1 GB | |
| Openomy | 1 GB | 10 GB bandwidth/month |
| PutPlace | 2 GB | Er…that’s us. |
| Rapid Upload |
300 MB |
Unlimited downloads |
| SnapDrive.net | 2 GB | |
| Spread-It | 500 MB | 14 Day free file hosting, no registration required |
| Windows Live Skydrive |
5 GB | Requires Windows Live membership |
| Xdrive | 5 GB | |
| Yahoo Briefcase | 1 GB | Requires Yahoo Id |
| Yuntaa | 1 GB | Still in Beta |
| Z Upload | 500 MB | Unlimited downloads |
Tags: backup, competition, digital life, free storage, online storage, virtual storage, web storage
May 28th, 2008 at 12:06 am
heres a couple more for the list
- http://www.boxstr.com/ - 5GB
- http://www.orbitfiles.com/ - 6GB
May 30th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
http://www.jungledisk.com/ (infinity? as it’s hosted on S3) Free first month.
http://getdropbox.com/ (unsure of limit, best of the bunch though!!! currently in beta, free accounts)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Someone needs to make a program to distribute files throughout these accounts from your computer. I heard about something that does that within GMail, so addition of free email storage would be possible as well. I’m sure that these services wouldn’t be too happy about that though! The only obstacle I see would be the difference in interfaces within these web applications.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Nick,
We will offer that capability with PutPlace in the future.
Joe.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
HP has a new offering at upline.com. They had problems at first, and pulled it for a couple of weeks, but it’s back. I think they offer 1GB free.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Rick,
Upline is strictly speaking a backup product, but we do like it a lot. Unfortunately its not available in Europe.
Joe.
June 7th, 2008 at 3:37 am
http://gmail.com works too. If you have Firefox, just download Gspace and you can use your Gmail account as online storage, and, because it’s constantly growing, you could have over 7GB soon. And you can store whatever you want on it.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:41 am
4ntisocial just beat me to mentioning gmail =P
June 10th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Do any of these work like a mappable windows drive letter, or are they all various takes on ftp-type uploading?
-Rich
June 10th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
This aint alot when it comes to music. mp3 locker is really gd, unlimited storage, max file size 10Mb, web player, check out at mp3tunes.com
June 11th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Rich, if you have Windows, there’s a program you can download that maps a GMail account to a drive letter. But I use GSpace, so I’ve forgotten the name of that program.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Nice list. I personally like drop.io they are more aimed at transfers but they have some fantastic features included for free.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Nick - You’re halfway to my idea. Rich & Izkata what you’re looking for is GmailFS, and something like that’s a component of my idea.
Take free online storage, many different places, many different accounts. Break uploads into chunks, use a header files to keep track of what is where, and the login info for those accounts. Use something akin to GmailFS to mount this as a virtual drive, but show only the header files, not all of the sub-chunks. Now, you’re connecting to dozens if not hundreds of different accounts to upload and download from, meaning you can upload and download as fast as your connection can handle it - no matter where you uploaded from versus are downloading to.
But it gets better.
I could share login information with people I trust(they’d have R/W access, so I better trust them), and now I can upload as fast as my connection can allow, and once the files are there, you could download them as fast as you could handle it.
Sure, an app like this would be a bit abusive, so some servers might change their policies or delete accounts doing this - and that’s a problem as if you lose 1 chunk, you lose the ability to reconstitute the file. Hence we’ll need some mirroring so if one account goes down you’re still good. This works best with something like email, where you could forward chunks to other storage locations without having to upload them again, but in a pinch you could manually upload the mirror info(tho now you’re not -really- uploading as fast as you connection can handle as you’re uploading 2-3x the amount of data you really want). Now the header file has a listing of chunks, and say 3ish accounts under each chunk, there could even be something to test the relative connection speed of these alternatives to download from the fastest of them at the time. If at any point you cannot access an account, it would simply set up another forward to some other account to make sure you still have enough mirrors so you don’t lose data.
Spread this over a number of different hosting sites so no one or two of them could lock you out of your data with account deletion or a site change which would require a patch on the part of your virtual file system. Now you’ve got something which is really resilient, and would require pretty massive collaboration between these hosting sites to shut down, or even temporarily lock you out of your data. The more hosting sites included in this FS, the more resilient it is, but the more time required to code it in the 1st place and keep it operational as sites change their layouts and require a patch to the FS etc - but I think once people see how fast and convenient this could be, you’d get enough people interested in helping to maintain and augment the FS.
June 13th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hi,
I think you must add inbox.com which gives 5GB free too .
Thanks,
July 8th, 2008 at 8:09 am
http://www.mybloop.com/ Unlimited Free space
July 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
- http://www.arkiva.com/ 1GB free