Your phone flashes "Storage almost full" just as you're trying to take a photo.
Or worse, the laptop doesn't switch on one morning and ten years of files are inside it.
That is the problem the cloud quietly solves.
What exactly is the cloud?
Everything on your computer sits on its hard drive, a disk inside the machine.
When you copy a file from your computer to the internet, you are uploading it.
When you copy it back, you are downloading it.
The cloud is simply rented hard drive space on the internet.
You upload your files there, and you can open them on any phone, tablet or computer using your username and password.
Nobody else can see them, because they sit behind your account.
Do I really need it?
If your laptop died tonight, what would you actually lose?
Some people say they keep backups on an external hard drive.
That works right up until you forget for three months, or the drive falls off the table.
Hard drives fail.
They always have.
The cloud copies your files the moment you save them, without waiting for you to remember.
Which service should I use?
If you have a Gmail address, you already have Google Drive.
If you have an outlook.com or hotmail.com address, you already have Microsoft OneDrive.
Dropbox needs a fresh account at dropbox.com.
All three give you a desktop app and a phone app.
Install the desktop app and it creates a folder on your computer.
Anything you drop into that folder uploads on its own.
How much do I get free?
Google gives you 15 GB, shared between Gmail, Drive and Google Photos.
Photos stopped being free and unlimited a few years ago, so that 15 GB fills faster than you expect.
OneDrive gives you 5 GB, and a full terabyte if you already pay for Microsoft 365.
Dropbox is the stingiest of the three.
On an iPhone, iCloud gives you 5 GB, which is about one holiday's worth of photos.
Paid plans start at 100 GB, and each service shows you the rupee price before you pay.
Isn't this the same as a backup?
Not quite, and this trips people up.
Delete a file on your phone and it disappears from the cloud too, because the two are kept in sync.
So for the few things you truly cannot lose, keep one more copy somewhere else.
Things to Remember
- Switch on automatic photo backup in the app, set to Wi-Fi only.
- Check what is eating your 15 GB before you pay for more space.
- Turn on two-factor authentication, which asks for a code on your phone as well as your password.
- Do big uploads on Wi-Fi, not on your Jio or Airtel data pack.
- Keep a separate copy of the files you genuinely cannot lose.