Online Storage: The Next Generation

So help me, I like floppy disks. Technologically, they're primordial. But they're also cheap, intuitive, and almost universally compatible. And puny though their 1.44MB capacity may be these days, they can hold more than a few spreadsheets, text files, or even digital photos. That's why the much-maligned floppy has remained my favorite way to shuttle files from computer to computer.

Last year, I thought that might change. Free virtual drive services such as I-drive and Xdrive had hit the scene. Signing up for one of them netted you a Web-based, password-protected "drive" with 20 or more megabytes of space, accessible from any Internet-connected PC. Unfortunately, these services' initial incarnations were so slow and ungainly that I let my accounts languish for months.

Recently, though, the early contenders have received sweeping makeovers, and new rivals continue to pop up. It seemed time to give virtual drive services a second chance. So I revisited I-drive and Xdrive to see what was new, and signed up for accounts at two relative latecomers, My Docs Online and Driveway.

Have virtual drives changed for the better? Absolutely. The best are now easier to use, more powerful, and generally handier for moving documents between your work and home PCs and for zapping files to distant friends and colleagues. Driveway's my current favorite, mostly because of its straightforward look and feel. Still, even the new, improved world of online storage isn't free of technical snafus and half-baked features.

Foraging for Storage

With virtual drives, the word virtual might as well be a code name for slow and small. Performance, of course, hinges on the speed of your Net connection--a cable modem or DSL line provides maximum oomph. Nor will capacity rival that of your hard disk: The services offer anywhere from 20MB (My Docs Online) to 50MB (I-drive) for your files. If you need more room, though, you can probably get it. Every service except I-drive lets you increase your quota to at least 100MB, either by paying a monthly fee or as a reward for "good deeds" such as getting buddies to register.

Though Web browsers do lots of things well, heavy-duty file management still isn't one of them. The browser-based interfaces offered by these services are okay for moving a file or two at a time, but they're underpowered for wrangling droves of documents or whole directories. That's why all the services offer some kind of desktop integration that makes your virtual drive act more like a real one.

Xdrive's integration goes the furthest: After you download and install the service's 1.3MB desktop utility, your Xdrive space shows up as a drive in Windows. File management becomes a snap with Windows Explorer, and you can even reach your Xdrive from any Open or Save dialog box in any Windows application. But while this utility is slick and effective, it's incompatible with Windows 2000, my operating system of choice. A Win 2000 version is in the works, but it isn't due for several months.

For the time being, I'll make do with Web Folders, which is a similar feature offered by Driveway, I-drive, and My Docs Online. Web Folders aren't for Microsoft-phobes, however: They work only if you have Internet Explorer 5.0 or above installed on your PC. And even then, your virtual drive shows up only within My Computer, Windows Explorer, and Microsoft Office 2000.