"ADRIVE"
The "ADrive" Web site is located at
They have both free and non-free accounts. Their
free accounts provide a humongous 50 gigabytes of storage. They are a bit harder
to use than the previous 4 online storage sites that we have already discussed
in this series.
The key features for a free account are:
Total storage space = 50 Gigabytes
Maximum single file size = 2 Gigabytes
Maximum monthly bandwidth = not stated on
"Adrive" Web site
The maximum monthly bandwidth is the total
amount of data that you (and others that you designate) upload to, and download
from, your free account.
"ADrive" does not limit the types of
files that you can store.
The home page of the "ADrive" Web site
looks like this:
Click on the "Sign Up" tab and you will
get an online form to sign up for an account:
Use the drop-down arrow on the right of the
white form field that is next "Please Select Your Plan" to select the
"Basic - Free" account.
Then, fill in the rest of the form and click on
the "Continue" button.
Now, go to your e-mail inbox and locate the
"Welcome to ADrive!" message that they have just sent to you. Inside
this e-mail message, you will find a hyperlink that you can click on to
activate your new account.
Next, go to http://www.adrive.com and sign in
with your e-mail address and password. After you click on the "Sign
In" button, you will see a page that contains a section that looks like a
"Windows Explorer".
Click on the "Create Directory" button
to create a folder at your storage space at "ADrive".
Then enter a name for your new folder, as
requested.
Click on the "Upload Files/Directories"
hyperlink to upload data files from your computer to your account at "ADrive".
The first time that you click on this button for any specific browser in a
specific computer, you will probably get a security warning as follows:
Click on its "Run" button.
After a second or two, you will get the online
form for uploading files or folders to your "ADrive" account:
Now, click on the "Add" button and you
will get a "Browse" box:
Navigate to
the files or folders that you wish to upload.
Then click
on the "Open" button.
The
"Upload files to:" list will now show all of the individual files
that you have selected, regardless of whether you selected a single file or a
directory that contains other files and/or directories:
"ADrive" allows you to shares files with others.
At the present time "ADrive" does not
allow you to share an entire online folder with others. You have to share each
shared file individually. The developers of "ADrive" stated that they
plan to implement folder sharing in the future.
To share a file:
Right click on the file that you wish to share:
Then click on the "Share" button on
the dialog box that pops up.
Click on the "Yes" button in the
"Confirm Share" dialog box. Then right click on the file (that you
are sharing) again. A "Public File Details" box will pop up. Click on
the "Email a Friend" button to notify persons whom you want to share
the file with of the URL where they can access the file.
"ADrive" has one feature that
differentiates it from the other free cloud-based storage services:
According to
http://online-storage-service-review.toptenreviews.com/adrive-review.html
<Start of quote>
ADrive provides access to the Zoho Online
Document Editor so that you don’t even need to download your files to a
computer hard drive to access them and edit them. This is a wonderfully useful
tool, especially if you are using a public or bare-bones computer that might
not have document editing software. Plus, it’s just more convenient even if you
do have editing software. You can make changes right in Zoho and save; you’re
done. This feature alone makes us love ADrive, regardless of what else it has
to offer.
<End of quote>
Using the online "Web application"
called "Zoho Writer" which is integrated into "ADrive", you
can edit any .doc format (Microsoft Word), .html format, .sxw "OpenOffice
text document" format, .rtf "Rich Text" format, or .txt format.
Using Zoho, you can create and edit these types of document files without
having Word processing software on the computer that you are using.
The official blog of the "ADrive"
company is located at
http://www.adrive.com/community
This Web page keeps their users informed about
pending improvements and modifications to the various free and non-free levels
of storage service.