With the impending arrival of iCloud, I realized my 18 gig iDisk was soon to be in jeopardy. I use my iDisk as a drag-and-drop backup system for oddities and curiosities that I like to save during my work day. With iDisk storage gone in iCloud, I realized I’d better find a new form of easy backup.
What happens to the files on my MobileMe iDisk?
You will be able to continue using MobileMe iDisk through June 30, 2012, even after moving to iCloud. You should save copies of all files stored on iDisk before that date.
One of the forgotten benefits of getting rid of iDisk now, instead of waiting until Apple pulls the plug in a year, was getting 18 gigs of local storage back on my machine! Oh, how I needed that extra stretching room between the Apple remote iDisk storage server and my local, mirrored, drive.
Now that I have all that disk space back, I need to find another simple remote disk storage system. I could use Google Docs or Dropbox or Amazon S3. I am a little disappointed, though, that Apple isn’t moving iDisk into the iCloud.
It looks like iCloud will offer some sort of conditional storage space:
I currently use more than 5GB of storage in MobileMe. Will I be able to buy more storage for iCloud?
Yes. iCloud includes 5GB of free storage for mail, documents, and backup, which should be enough for most users. Purchased music, apps, and books do not count against this 5GB of storage, nor do the photos in your Photo Stream. If you still need more storage, you will be able to buy it. Details will be provided when iCloud is available this fall.
Are people not using iDisk? Is iDisk made of olden technology that doesn’t suit up today’s needs? In all the years I’ve used iDisk, I never had a problem. iDisk ran every day without a single incident or hiccough.
Technology trundles on without us — but I confess to missing my little iDisk icon that would remotely sync to servers faraway that I never saw nor met, but depended upon daily to have my remote backup back.