Still around for the using.
About two years ago I said goodbye to what I figured was the last of my online virtual hard drives. In their heyday I had about four of these - not because I needed so much virtual space, but because I was interested in finding which was best for my own needs, including which most readily permitted the sharing of files among multiple users. A bit earlier I'd written about how ubiquitous these tools had become - slightly before they seemed to disappear almost all at once.
As I prepared for our trip, however, I again felt the need for a tool such as this. I wanted to be able to access the documents that I might need from wherever I would be, and it seemed to me that a virtual drive would be just what I needed. (I also began to realize that I was forgetting that this really was supposed to be a vacation, not an exercise in getting work done while away from home). Though the interface wasn't as attractive as the tools I remembered from a few years earlier, the 25MB of disk space offered by the tool I eventually found, BTInet Web Storage, was definitely more than good enough for my needs. On the other hand, if there were documents that I needed in print format, it was easier to carry these around with me already printed out than to know they were available via the web if and when I would get to a computer with a printer, and just about anything I might store on that virtual drive was kept on a CD as well, thus almost totally negating the need for the drive. It did, however, come in handy in a manner that I hadn't fully anticipated. Though I expected that I might save my writing in this way (a backup to my floppies), I discovered that numerous digitized items that didn't fit on a floppy, or that I had no reason to carry around with me but would want to keep and file once I got home, could be saved in this way. It also came in handy when I encountered difficulty moving a file from a PC to a Mac. E-mailing the file was one alternative, but downloading it from that virtual drive turned out to be even more useful.
Go to: The Boidem takes a vacation.