Store All That You Want on Your Personal Cloud

Storage space for one’s digital files, documents and media is always at a premium. But cloud storage can be an expensive proposition and depends on the service provider. Thankfully, there is an open source solution that is tailor made for this kind of sit

When someone talks about cloud storage, the first thing that comes to mind is Dropbox or, maybe, the more recent doogle Drive. With services like these becoming popular, ‘the cloud’ is something that most of us have come to understand and use on an almost daily basis. But even though these services have become ubiquitous, you still need to work within the space constraints that they impose. With all the media we have access to, like movies, music and photographs, 2 or 5 dB of storage space just seems too little. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just set up our own private syncing service and hook up our hard disk to get a cloud storage service that we own and control? Well, thanks to open source software called ownCloud, this is indeed possible. What’s more, it’s very simple and straightforward to set up! Your personal cloud When you choose a commercial cloud storage company like Dropbox, you get pre- determined, non- configurable features along with their terms of service and data storage limit plans, which are liable to change. And as has been proven in the past, these services and, by extension, your data, are also at risk of being hacked.

On the other hand, a personal cloud is exactly what the name implies. You decide the storage limits, you choose the apps and features that should run on it and you decide the level of access that you want for your cloud. The personal cloud concept is still relatively new, and commercial vendors in this domain are few and very expensive. However, ownCloud provides a robust, free and open source alternative to setting up your own personal