Free Cloud Storage of 100 GB from Symform : Review

We wrote several articles about Cloud Computing and cloud Storage. Symform, a company founded by  Parerit Garg and Bassam Tabbara (Ex-Microsoft Employees) has arranged an unique way to give 100 GB of Free Cloud Storage to the Customers and Partners. Most other online Cloud Storage providers offer 2GB or 3GB for free, this looks great.

Wow!  Free Cloud Storage of 100 GB ?

Wait, you have to contribute 150 GB of your Hard Disk drive to get this 100 GB Cloud Storage. As Dong Ngo rightly said at cnet,   their claim that it is the first service to offer this kind of Free Cloud Storage Sharing service. So, calculate your cost of Bandwidth, electricity and most importantly you must be aware that your local hard disk is being accessed by a third party application to get this free Cloud Storage.

So how this Free Cloud Storage works?

After initial sign up. you will be able to download a .net based application to synchronize your data and use the Free Cloud Storage.

Practically, you can not control the bandwidth this Free Cloud Storage application will suck from you. You can not stop the service of  Free Cloud Storage application from task manager either, this  Free Cloud Storage application will run with Administrative privileges like a system application.

So, will I use this Free Cloud Storage?

You are asking us whether you will use this Free Cloud Storage? We will say to stay away from this Free Cloud Storage application and  Free Cloud Storage service. The reasons are:

• It seems the company does not have proper infrastructure to provide a great deal or Free Cloud Storage, you can easily understand the situation if your hard disk has lots of virus, malware and you “donate” your 150 GB space as a part of ” Free Cloud Storage application” using their .Net based app.
• Google Storage and Google appspot offers blob based storage, enough for storing images and static files, kind of  Free Cloud Storage.
• Rackspace and other standard brands offers Cloud storage that is really not too steep and have excellent security.
• Microsoft itself offers Sky Drive to store your data. It is not true “Cloud Storage” still we can think it as  Free Cloud Storage, as you are seeking something for free.
• With Dropbox Free Cloud Storage, you can increase your quota by referral system.