How to create and manage a 100GB Virtual Cloud Drive including Google Drive and Dropbox

If you’ve been using your 15GB Google Drive and 2GB default Dropbox Cloud Storage as I have been as described in my blog article entitled “How to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share and Promote your Content online - Sharing is Caring”, by now you’re maxing out the space. You may also be resorting to registering multiple Google Cloud Storage Accounts or Dropbox Accounts. Trust me I know; that’s exactly what I’m doing now.

So what else can you do?

After all, most of these other Accounts have to be registered using different emails and you don’t want to be creating a new email Account every time you want to add another 15GB. Actually you can manage having multiple Google Drive and Dropbox Accounts, if you already have multiple email Accounts like I do. However, if you don’t relish remembering so many passwords, there are alternative File Storage options and software to manage them all.

Google Drive and Dropbox – It’s all in the login, either on the Web or on the Desktop

If you have multiple Google Accounts, you can switch between them with Google Drive on the web by signing out and signing in back on the other Google Drive Account on the same browser. With a Google Chrome Browser and a Mozilla Firefox Browser, you can log into BOTH Account simultaneously, one on each browser. However, you can only use a single Google Drive Account with Google Drive.

That’s the catch. It's not possible to use Google Drive for your Mac/PC with more than one Account at the same time. But there's a workaround; just like the Web Based versions of Google Drive, you can disconnect the Account you're signed into and sign into another Account.  After you disconnect, your files will remain on your computer, but any changes made to your Google Drive folder won't be synced to Google Drive on the web.

Here's how you Switch Accounts for Google Drive for your Mac/PC:

1.      Go to the Google Drive menu on your computer

2.      Select Preferences (Mac) or Settings (Windows)

3.      Click the Disconnect Account button

4.      Click Yes

5.      To sign into another Account, go to the Google Drive menu, and select Sign in

6.      Choose a different folder for that other Google Drive Account

7.      Your files will begin automatically syncing

The same exact strategy can also be employed with Dropbox for multiple Accounts as with Google Drive; login on different browsers to access different Accounts on the web or disconnect the client software, re-login and create a different synchronized folder on the desktop. Just make sure you have a large and fast 500GB hard-Drive and at least 4GB of RAM, otherwise this much simultaneous activity will degrade the performance of your PC while online.

Best Free Cloud Storage options – List of the ones to make a 100GB Cloud Drive

For some months now I’ve been trying to create a cohesive 100GB online storage by cobbling together various free Cloud Drive options to make one virtual 100GB Cloud. I’ve almost succeeded in the past few months and trus’ me, it’s been quite an experience.

First you have to start with an exhaustive list of cloud backup Services on Wikipedia.

From this list you then select the Cloud Services you need based on what you plan to store and how you plan to use what you upload. Once you compose you list of the Best Free Cloud Storage options out there that you can register for with one email Accounts, add them up to make you dream 100GB+ Cloud Drive as explained in “Supersize your free cloud storage to 100GB or more”, published May 3, 2013 3:00 AM by Ian Paul, PC World similar to my list.

My list is composed of Cloud Drive Services I’ve actually used and are now a part of my virtual 100GB+ Cloud Drive. I mainly like Cloud Services to store large files for sharing, Collaboration and Streaming on my blogs “My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica” and “Jamaican Downloads”. Thus I chose to following to make up my 100GB+ Cloud Drive for the listed Reasons:

For expert recommendations in case you don’t trust my judgement, check out these articles that I read months ago in reviewing these Free Cloud Drive Services before I composed my own 100GB+ Virtual Cloud Drive:

1.      “Best of the cloud: 7 top cloud storage services compared”, published November 12, 2012 By Mika Turim-Nygren, DigitalTrends

2.      “Five Best Cloud Storage Providers”, published 6/30/13 8:00am by Alan Henry, LifeHacker

3.      “The Best Cloud Storage Solutions”, published January 2, 2013 By Jill Duffy, PC Magazine

4.      “The Top 8 Free Online File Storage Sites”, published January 25, 2013 5:30 PM by Devon Glenn, SocialTimes

5.      “The top 10 personal cloud-storage services”, published February 25, 2013 15:21 GMT (07:21 PST) By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet

This brings the grand total to 102GB. All accessible using one email Account but different passwords! This is now bewilderingly hard to keep track of (I know, as it’s very hard to maintain too)! Also, maintaining my dream 100GB+ Cloud requires that I have at least access to high speed Internet, something I have considerable trouble having constant access. 

Hence the reason why I purchased a Greenpacket Ex-250 WiMaX Modem, that clocks a decent 10MBps (really 4-6MBps, with close to 8MBps late at night) and was featured in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to setup and troubleshoot your Digicel 4G Broadband Modem”.

Despite this difficulty, I don’t plan to stop here!

Future plans for my 100GB+ Cloud – More Hardware not software for my Dream Cloud

I plan to upgrade my “4G” Broadband modem to one that supports Wi-Fi connections. I also plan at some time to start purchasing more Cloud Storage. But until then, I manage it all using JoliCloud, which integrated not only all the above mentioned Cloud Drive Services in once convenient Desktop Application but also allows me to scope out my Twitter and Facebook Feeds.

I also plan to get the following in the future as I’m getting serious about my Blogging, the main reason why I have my 15GB Google Drive and 2GB default Dropbox:

1.      1TB SSD (Solid State Drive) External Storage

2.      Ultrabook Laptop with 8GB RAM and 500GB Hard-Drive

3.      Smartphone or Tablet to remotely monitor my Cloud Drive on the Go

I still from time to time login to each Cloud Service individually online as well as make changes and re-synchronize files via the Cloud Drive Folders located in My Documents folder.

Makes life a little crowded. But it’s my 100GB+ Cloud Drive dream as the popularity of my blogs “My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica” and “Jamaican Downloads” is Hunger Game: Catching Fire (2013) …. and I love it!