I would hope by now, everyone knows how useful DropBox is.  If you don’t, you really should sign up.  They give you 2gb free, plus 250meg for everyone you invite.

The problem is, 2 gig is great for certain files you want to keep safe, but it wont look after you 80gig digital photo collection.  That’s where Wuala steps in!

For DropBox you could pay $200 a year and have 100 gig of space.  There are others you could use, around the £50 mark for a year, but Wuala is totally free!  It works on everyone sharing a little bit of their own storage, and you get ‘cloud’ storage, which is actually held on other people’s PC’s (encrypted, of course).

It’s calculated as such -

Share = The amount I have stored on my PC, up to a limit I set from my own HDD, which cannot be bigger than 100gig.

Online = The % of time this storage is available online  (your PC doesn’t have to be on 24/7)

My Free storage =Online * 10 * Share

In my case, 84% * 10 * 13.8gig = 84gig free cloud storage

I have it installed on my file server and my main PC.  These both share space and both contribute to my account, meaning I have 93 gig available to me right now.  This will go over 100gig when my own drive is actually used for more storage. I’ve allowed 100 gig, but only actually have 13 gig of other people’s encrypted files right now.

Once you start sharing, you are a ‘Pro user’ which means you can use folder syncing.  I’ve just set up my photo folder (probably close to 80 gig) and my ‘My Documents’ folder.  It will now keep them sync’d with the cloud.  Any PC I install Wuala on, can now access these files.

Why am I telling you all about this?  Well of course, there’s an Android app to go with it!  It’s not quite as versatile as the DropBox app just yet, you can’t send files to Wuala so easily, but you can access everything stored already.  I now have my entire digital photo album at my disposal, for example.  I can browse thumbnails and lower quality versions and select if I want to download the full quality picture.

So, to sign up and give it a try, use my link and referral code -

http://www.wuala.com/referral/5MKF4APGBK4BM6BPB763

Be aware, you’re online time takes a while to build up.  I have 100 gig shared from my file server, which is on 24/7 and even a month later, it’s still only at 84%.

Also, if your online time drops down and your storage is less than you have in the cloud, it doesn’t get deleted, you just can’t upload any more.

The only problem I have had, if I selected a big folder, like 20 gig, it would seem to crash my PC. Sometimes a freeze, sometimes a BSOD.  So far folder sync seems to work fine though.