There are a number of misconceptions regarding cloud storage, which can lead to a number of common cloud storage mistakes. Many people believe that cloud storage is more secure than other types of storage, which can result in files failing to be encrypted before they are uploaded or uploading files that should never reside in the cloud.
Much of the confusion around cloud storage comes from language. The concept of the cloud conjures up images of decentralized data, leading many to think of it as a kind of distributed storage spread across multiple devices, or as a peer-to-peer storage concept where unused space is shared among users. But this is usually not the case.
The reality is much simpler, less romantic and more practical. Cloud storage is just remote storage provided to users by a third party. Think of stacks of hard drives located in a data center or warehouse, delivering data to a provider’s customers over the Internet, and you envision a common type of cloud storage.
How Cloud Storage Works
The concept is less complicated than many users imagine. Simply put, a provider like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Apple iCloud or Dropbox builds a physical storage infrastructure, consisting of servers with processors, memory and disks hosted in data centers, all linked by a high-speed network and redundancy. This redundancy covers both the data itself as well as the power sources, so neither data corruption nor a power outage should result in the loss of customer data. Providers then rent this storage to customers, usually for a fee.
In other words, cloud storage doesn’t replace hard drives with some weird new storage concept. Most of the time, it simply moves the hard drives elsewhere and adds software that keeps your devices pointed to the latest version of your files.
Cloud storage has many advantages. The most obvious is capacity. Since the cost of physical storage is high, moving to the cloud is a way to store data without having to free up a lot of space. Cloud storage also allows you (theoretically) to access your data from anywhere with Internet access. This also makes it easier to share data between multiple users, especially in most popular storage systems, which have systems that allow you to selectively share data without having to provide your login credentials.
