Yeah free cloud storage is pitiful at best ,100gb would go down well with me if it was permanent,they should at least offer 50gb free for always,microsoft just increased their email cloud storage to 50gb & the replacement for megauplod offers 50gb free out of the box,i guess it'll take a while before we start to see some decent free storage however it's a start,tho i don't fancy uploading all the stuff i've hoarded over the years most of which i never use  i suspect a few of you lot have tb's of junk as well not that you'd admit it,one things certain i certainly know i ain't the only one

Microsoft's offer isn't free, and MEGA should be your last joice to upload your data. Kim Schmitz, the guy who runs that is a criminal who has been convicted of fraud multiple times (Megaupload, although shady, was his most honest business model, that should make you think).

there's a company called ADrive that offers 50 GB for free, but just like with the mentioned SurDoc i am not sure whether their business model will work and they will still exist in a few years. http://www.adrive.com/

i think it might be a smarter strategy to use the service of more established companies:

if you want free permanent storage, look at Box.com. they run so many promotions, i doubt there are many users limited to the 5 GB mentioned in the original post. own an LG or Sony smartphone? 50 GB for free ... a list of all running promotions is here: https://support.box.com/entries/22057282-box-promotions-faq

if you are willing to convince a few friends, Yandex.Disk will give you up to 20 GB for free. http://disk.yandex.com/

people who can read Korean are off best. both national search engines offer permanent large storage for free. NAVER's nDrive is 30 GB and Daum Cloud is even 50 GB. http://ndrive.naver.com/index.nhn http://cloud.daum.net/

if you can read German, you might be interested in Deutsche Telekom's Mediencenter, 25 GB for free. http://medien-center.telekom.de/

In "Farnham's Freehold" (Heinlein, 1965) a memorable acronym appeared: "TANSTAAFL" - "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

No matter what you'd "like", you get what's on the menu.

A chacun son goût.

I loved Heinlein, I thought "Stranger in a Strange Land" was awesome.

If You have Your own webserver, Owncloud could be a good alternative.

 Carl! Really nice info. Thanks.

It's really nice to use. Not sure about the security, but noone should store sensitive data in clouds anyways

Correct. Absolutely agree! Sicher ist immer besser!

I've just started reading Heinlein's "starship troopers" probably read some time ago but still a good read.

I don't get the cloud thing for data storage. flash drives and portable HDs sizes make your files portable. Sharing maybe? what?, please enlighten.

one scenario i use quite often is that i save ebooks i find to Yandex.Disk by just right-clicking the link in the browser. then i can access it from my desktop, tablet or phone. and no, carrying a portable hd and cables along with my phone is not an option.

and hey, uploading skins to WC is not that much different, except that the download link is public by default. without such a storage on the internet you would have to get in the car with your portable harddrive and visit everyone that would like your skins individually (or use email)

Online storage makes sense for many things such as a copy which can't be harmed even if something happens to your home/office/computer. It can also function as a sync point for files for others as well as yourself. You can carry your OS and all its customizations on a stick and load it into a virtual environment on another computer and work with your files while traveling without carrying a computer with you. That goes for those working on a project with you. Time, space and location are bridged that way.

Say you wanted to make a collaborative skin with 2of3. He's on an ocean liner and you're traveling and doing your day job or on vacation. You work on a number of files and store them when you can, and he accesses and modifies them when he can, adding notes. That way, you gain speed, agility and accessibility among other things.

When Po' was doing Roan, he uploaded graphics to WC. He also had a number of "Piece by piece" threads where skinners could add comments and he could ask questions. In effect, WC was his online storage.

In fact, all our Galleries and Forums are online storage...they're just accessible to many more people.

*As for "Starship Troopers"...while many called him a war monger for it, he wasn't any such thing. He was a genius of speculative fiction. That book was one of my all time favorites, as so many of his novels, collections and short stories are.

Another sad loss - Frederick Pohl has died at 93. His novels are classics...if you get a chance do read his work.