DIY ‘Cloud’ Storage (Cheap) With Pogoplug

This week’s home-entertainment technology column:

A little space in the cloud doesn’t cost a lot. The first five gigabytes, in fact, are usually free from services like Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Google Drive and Apple’s iCloud.

For those who haven’t stuck their heads in the cloud, these services store personal documents, music, movies and photos on a remote server so you can access them anywhere from a computer, smartphone, tablet or other device.

I found a much better freebie, 50 gigabytes, recently at Box.com, enough to store everything (if I desired) currently on my iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, MacBook and Dell laptop. Yes, I live a fairly spare digital life, except when it comes to music. My music library, approaching 700 gigabytes, keeps growing.
That’s what led me to Pogoplug’s “personal” cloud storage concept, which debuted i
Now in its fourth generation, the Series 4 ($99 retail; $40 at Amazon.com) resembles an AppleTV or Roku set-top box, but its mission remains the same: When connected to a router and an external hard drive (or with the current version, an eSata drive, USB 2.0/3.0 drive or SD card), it creates your own private cloud with no monthly fees.n 2009 with a device that looked like an external hard drive but acted more like a mini-computer.

More . . .