Cloud storage today is a ubiquitous phenomenon. No more do people wince and cringe at the mention of the cloud because it’s so pervasive. As a matter of fact, people have been using the cloud for more than ten years now, but most of them didn’t even know it! Gmail, for example, is an email service hosted on the cloud. But what about deliberately trusting your Android backup data to the cloud? Is that a wise thing to do? And what are the options?
A cloud backup location for Android or any other operating system is merely a secure storage location that saves you from needing to have a huge capacity on your device. If you’re a click-happy camper, for instance, then you’ll have thousands of selfies and other photos on your device, which will tend to slow down the device over time.
With a cloud storage solution, you can free your device from the burden of holding on to gigs and gigs of photos. Besides, backups aren’t only for photos: you can back up any and all information on your Android phone to any of these cloud services, including contacts, messages, videos, apps/apps data and much more.
The biggest benefits of using cloud storage for your Android backups are that you free up your device memory, you have a restore option if something happens to the device, and you can easily share cloud-stored data with anyone you want.
So, without further ado, let’s look at some of the top cloud storage solutions for backing up your Android phone data.
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Google Drive
This is the most obvious option because nearly everyone has a Google account. Google offers 15GB of free storage space and unlimited storage for photos and videos. All you need is the Photos app to archive everything, and you can then delete it from your device. However, to backup all your Android data, you’ll need to go to Settings. Under “Personal” in the main menu, you’ll see the option “Backup and Reset”. This is where you set your backup location. All you need to do is specify the Google account where you want your backups saves, and Google does the rest.
Amazon Drive
This is another great tiered service, but it only offers 5GB of free space. Like Google, Amazon lets you store photos and videos for free so those won’t count against the free storage limit. Of course, you’ll have to be an Amazon Prime member to get the free quota in the first place, but it’s well worth the annual subscription price to get access to unlimited storage for your media files.
Microsoft OneDrive
This is another popular backup cloud storage solution for Android phone users. The biggest benefit here is that it integrates seamlessly with all of Microsoft’s other products such as Word, Excel and so on. 5GB is given free with your Microsoft account, and you can pay for higher limits as well.
Dropbox
Everyone knows Dropbox because it’s been around for a long time now, but not everyone knows that the new Dropbox works well with several Android elements. That makes it very suitable for a cloud backup location. Their free limit is quite small – 2GB – but you can upgrade to 1TB at just $9.99 a month. The app is pre-installed on many Android devices, so that makes it a lot easier to share media with others. Even if they don’t have the app they can do direct downloads from the share links you send them.
Box
This is another up and coming cloud storage solution that’s ideal for your Android backup needs. Personal accounts are free, and you get 10GB of free storage when you sign up for the service. Paid upgrades are possible, obviously, but their plans cap out at 100GB. If you need more, then this is not the option for you.
MEGA
If you’ve heard of Megaupload, the service that was shut down a couple of years ago, then you’ll know its new avatar: MEGA. This service offers 50GB for free, and you’re not going to find that anywhere else. The most important feature you should know that all uploads are encrypted for additional security.
All of these are great cloud services, but unless you want to manually backup all your data to the cloud, you may need specialized apps that let you take automatic backups to various cloud locations. For example, some of them are limited by media type. In other words, they’ll only backup your SMS text messages or contacts. Others are limited in where they let you store the data; cloud locations may not be an option here.
If you want to automatically backup your data to a particular cloud service, then it’s better to get the Android app for that service installed on your device. In most cases, the app will have a feature for taking automatic backups for restoring in the future.
