Some people enjoy their tunes being stored in the cloud, while others want a physical disc to play. Some folk prefer to keep their files online, while others want to safely save them to the computer. It is sadly possible for a favorite YouTube video to be suddenly removed by the person or YouTube itself. While it may save our computer storage space when everything is online, there is no guarantee that it will always be accessible.
USB sticks have been very popular for storing data and transferring it to different computers. They are quite small, however, and can be easily lost. It’s always possible to reformat the stick by mistake and lose everything. A person’s computer may break, and the saved data become inaccessible too. Having said that, there is a lot of sense in saving important files on a computer. There are fortunately several ways to do this, and that’s what this article is all about.
File Saving and File Changing Apps
If someone loves a tune on YouTube they may want to own it on their computer. If someone wants to download music there are fortunately apps that are designed for this purpose. Life becomes fun when an entire playlist can be saved at the press of a button. It can be accessed offline later on.
A person might say, ‘I don’t want to look at the video; I simply wish to hear the tune’. Fortunately, such apps can often change the file type, too. What began as a video file can end up as an mp3 or mp4, which will be perfect for the task.
Dropbox
This is a great file sharing app that stores files in the cloud. If someone wishes to give you a relatively small file (up to 100MB in size), they can do that using their Dropbox account.
You would need to create a free account as well. When you are provided access to their folder, you can safely save the file to your computer. The other person will have control over the file, and you will have a month to take action.
WeTransfer
Someone may wish to send you a large file, but their email account may be unable to cope with the huge document size. WeTransfer is the world’s most popular solution here.
The giver of the file simply goes to the WeTransfer website and enters their and your email address. They can write a brief message and attach a file that is up to 2GB in size. You will have a week to access this file, which will have been sent securely.
OneDrive and Google Drive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s answer to the same situation. The files can be anything up to 5GB. In addition to the encryption (which involves a unique key) and security, an additional password can be added. This will provide an extra layer of protection from hackers.
Google Drive requires a person to have a Google account and email address. Large files can be sent and received. The security level is as great as anything WeTransfer has to offer, yet it is completely free.
Firefox Send, and Smash
Firefox Send features end to end encryption that will frustrate any third party who tries to access the files. Smash is another option to use, and incredibly there is no ceiling to the file size that is being shared. Unsurprisingly, large files will take longer to receive and save than small ones.
Musical or Book Apps
We mentioned earlier that some people are happy to own their tunes in the cloud. If they choose to subscribe to a musical app, however, there will be an additional option to save the tunes to a computer or phone. This applies to such providers as Bandcamp, Spotify, or iTunes.
Many people read Amazon Kindle books from their computers as well as using Kindle readers. Once a book has been purchased, it will be stored in the cloud and can be read from any device. This includes phones, laptops, and tablets. People can opt to save their books as well, to access offline and keep forever. The computer is a great place for this to occur, and the files will be quite small.
Wisdom says that precious files should be stored in as many places as possible. Files on external drives and memory sticks can degrade over time, and as we have said, even computers can break.
When files and documents are being saved, this must be done securely, to keep hackers from accessing or tampering with the documents. Fortunately, there are apps and online platforms to enable this to occur safely. The documents can then be treasured for many years to come, whether they are books, videos, photos, or favorite tunes.