A wise man once said that a true progress does not come in steps but in occasional leaps. Digital storage is no exception to this rule. The first great transition was the one from floppy disks to CDs, and it was something that was completely revolutionary back then. Even though the DVD was far superior to its CD counterpart, there was no major occurrence of these proportions until the USB drive arrived. The advantages of USB drives were so great that some people believed that this was definitely a pinnacle of digital storage. Little did they know that soon, cloud computing is going to change all of this once and for all.
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A Matter of Space
Now, one of the greatest differences between USB drives and CD/DVD was in the fact that most flash drives used to have a lot more space. Of course, the space on a USB drive is quite finite. Once you buy it, that’s it! Once you fill it all up, you simply have to do one of these two simple things. The first one is to start deleting (which is not lucrative at all, as storing practices go) and the second one is buying an additional drive. On the other hand, by the nature of cloud storing, you first get some initial storage space for free, after which you can additionally buy as much more as you need.
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Getting Misplaced
When we speak about losing the little drive, the first thing we have in mind is it getting stolen. Because of their sizes and capabilities, USBs are common targets for pickpockets of various kinds. However, there is yet another risk, the risk of losing or forgetting it someplace. It often happens that it simply falls out of your pocket, or gets forgotten on the shelf after you move. This way all your data will be lost and this is not something that you can afford. Needless to say, a thing like this can never happen by utilizing cloud storage services.
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A Matter of Security
As we have already mentioned, the drive is easy to fall out of your pocket or even get stolen. When this happens, unless it is encrypted, anyone can access your most private piece of data that you had stored. This is definitely a cause for alarm. Even though it had some rough patches in the past, most experts agree that the security of cloud technology is now stronger than ever. Furthermore, there is an array of things you can do to further protect your data, such as coming up with a great password or better yet, encrypting your files.
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Availability
Even though there are many perks that cloud technology brings to the table, most agree that its greatest advantage is availability. In fact, people behind pCloud claim that the very fact that you can access your cloud storage from any terminal in the world, will make USB drives completely obsolete. Whether or not this will be the case yet remains to be seen.
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Retrieving Data
Every once in a little while, you will accidentally delete a wrong file, or remember you need something you have previously deleted. By switching to the cloud you will have a nearly unlimited amount of space, so you will seldom be forced to delete anything. However, even if this does happen, the data once stored on the cloud can always be retrieved. This feature alone can often be a lifesaver.
Progress leaves no stone unturned and now it is time for the world of digital storing to undergo an incredible metamorphosis. Even though there will always be pros and cons to any solution, the fact is that, as far as digital storing goes, cloud technology reigns supreme. This means that, in the same way as their predecessors, floppy discs or CD/DVD, the era of USB drives is slowly coming to an end.
