The word ‘cloud’ tends to cause attacks of anxiety these days. If that’s you, stay clear. I don’t wish to be accused of forcing anyone to read anything that causes stress.

Gladinet is a service that is ahead of the race. “What race?” you groan. It’s the race to sync your home computer files with a storage space such as Google Documents or SkyDrive. Gladinet (Starter Edition) will allow you to manually move files from your computer to Google Docs. [I’ll use Google docs below as an example, because I’m using it.]

It creates and N-Drive on your computer which represents – for example – Google Cloud (i.e. where you would store your Google Documents). So you use the N-Drive like any other drive on your home or work computer. BTW – tough if you cannot understand any of this. I’m not here to sell you anything – not here to convince you about something and certainly I’m not selling anything. All this is very very basic stuff. I’m not here to teach either – I’m here to share.

Gladinet Pro edition – which I bought for USD$49.99  – allows you to sync documents on your computer with a folder (or folders) in your Google documents storage space. So – in essence this works like SyncToy but it’s working between your computer and a cloud storage space. I have tried SyncToy with a Cloud Drive and it does not work properly (file creation dates cause a problem).

Each 20GB of Google storage space costs USD$5.00. That’s called dirt cheap. Yes – really! So, for an initial investment of USD$55.00 you and annual costs of $5.00 you could have a great backup and storage solution, for your key documents (assuming they’ll only occupy 20GB). If you need more space, 80GB for main sets of photos and docs is pretty good.

Just a reminder – I’m not selling anything here. This is a very good solution to off-site backup at a very reasonable cost. Do it now or suffer – and when you suffer loss of data, think of me!!