The Cloud? Whose Cloud? Mine? Apple’s?  Google’s? Drop Box’s?

Starting with its name, it’s called the cloud for basically 2 reasons. The first reason was based on effective every day marketing decisions. A marketed name needs to be catchy too, and especially in the case of technology, a cool name really helps. The second basic reason is the name needs to have some relevance to its function. One day a computer engineer was sketching on a paper napkin, a diagram of many connected networks. The things on the drawing representative of a group of networks, looked like an array of clouds. It was understood by other engineers and it caught on.

What Is Cloud Storage

OK. So now you know why its called the cloud. Well then, what is it’s function? The cloud is just a computer file storage service. Though the storage location is not up in the air in an atmospheric puffy white cloud.  Airplanes and birds can’t fly through it. It’s just a big building somewhere full of computer hard drives. iCloud My Cloud Your Cloud

Who provides “cloud” services.  MicrosoftOneDrive  GoogleDrive  DropBox  Apple iCloud all do among many others these days. A few years ago it was where the business growth was. When we send information from our computer, smartphone or tablet, the physical path it travels, can be partially “in-the-air”. Its first path segment can be through the wire connected directly from your computer. The next segment may be down your street on another wire, then up into the air (wireless). Then it can come down from the air to a receiver on the ground. And then continue on it’s way on another wire, or back up in the air to a satellite in orbit above the earth. iCloud My Cloud Your Cloud

So it really can / does go “up-into-the-air” and sort of, among the clouds, so to speak. But it’s not stored in a real atmospheric cloud where you would find the angels. The real part of this is that the any particular cloud service is composed of a physical building somewhere in the world. The building is full of hard drives onto which a copy of your computer files are stored.

Why Do We Need A Cloud Service?

OK. Well  then why do we need cloud services? Well one convenient thing is that no matter whose computer your using, you can open and access your cloud stored files. And you don’t have to be in your office or at home. You can access your stored cloud files from anywhere that there’s an internet connection.

iCloud My Cloud Your Cloud The other big reason is in the event of a computer hardware failure. That failure could be the logic board, power supply or other hardware component. When your own computers hard drive fails she better have a backup of it to go to.  All hard drives fail in a 3-5 year average. Some computer users make a copy backup of their files themselves. They themselves are sort of being their own local cloud service to themselves. That type of computer users has the responsibility to make sure nothing happens to the backup copy.

The cloud service sort of says to us that they are better at protecting our files from accidental loss or from the failure of our own hard drives then we are at protecting them. All your computer’s software, the operating system, your own personal files pictures, music, manuscript, poems, and your software programs are on your hard drive. Everything is on your hard drive. So you better protect yourself by backing them up / copying them routinely, either on your own backup hardware or on a cloud services hardware. If not, you’ll regret it one day and be really mad at somebody.

www.PrincetonComputers.Com can set you up with a Cloud backup and eliminate your loss worries. Call us today please. Thank you.