Reach for the Cloud

If you’re familiar with the Mobile Me service offered by Apple, one of its features is the ability to store files on Apple-run servers directly from the Mac, making them accessible from anywhere at any time.  Few people know this, but Microsoft also provides similar a similar capability with to anyone with a Windows Live account with its free SkyDrive service, providing 25 GB of storage.  Mac users get the privilege of paying $99/year for this capability, but with 5GB less storage space. Suckers.

It takes a few steps to get it setup, but they really aren’t that hard with a little instruction.  Windows 7 may be required, but it might work on Windows Vista, I haven’t tried it.  (I’m not running Vista on any of my computers any longer, so I can’t test it.)  I know it doesn’t work on XP.

1. First you need to sign up for the free SkyDrive service.  Go to http://skydrive.live.com and sign up.  If you already have a Windows Live account (such as Hotmail email), you just need to confirm that you want to activate the SkyDrive service.
   
   
2. Next, go to this site and download the SkyDrive Simple Viewer software.  It’s totally free, and you only need to run it once to get some information about your Windows Live account.
   
   
3. Extract SkyDrive Simple Viewer .zip file into a temporary folder.  For the sake of this discussion, extract it to C:\Temp\SDViewer.
   
   
4. Click Start, type cmd, and press Enter.
   
   
5. Type:
   
   CD /D C:\Temp\SDViewer
   dumpurls (Windows Live email address) (space) (Windows Live password) >links.txt
   
   Example: dumpurls myaddress@hotmail.com mypassword >links.txt
   
   
6. This will create a file called links.txt in the C:\Temp\SDViewer folder containing the “secret” links to make the connection.  Copy this file somewhere and keep it.  Once you have this file, you can delete the C:\Temp\SDViewer folder. 
   
   
7. Open your links.txt file.  Its contents will look something like this:
   
   https://abcdef.docs.live.net/abcdefg12345678/Pictures
   https://def123.docs.live.net/abcdefg12345678/Documents
   https://ace456.docs.live.net/abcdefg12345678/Music
   https://789fab.docs.live.net/abcdefg12345678/Videos
   https://cba321.docs.live.net/abcdefg12345678/Public
   
   These same links work on any computer; so feel free to copy this file and it them elsewhere.  Just don’t share them with anyone or they’ll have access to your files.
   
   
8. Click the Start button, right-click “Computer” on the menu, and select “Map Network Drive...”
   
   
9. Select the local drive letter you’d like to use, and copy one of the links from step 7 into the “Folder” field (select the appropriate link based on what type of files you are going to be saving).  Click Finish.

Voila!  The drive will open within a few seconds.  If you turn on the “Reconnect at Logon” option in step 9 it will automatically reconnect each time you logon to Windows.  Pretty cool stuff.

You now have a link in Windows Explorer to your SkyDrive “cloud” storage that can be used with any Windows program, and even shared between multiple computers.  And all for free, and without installing a single piece of software!

I even use it with the software I wrote and sell, FileBack PC, to backup important files automatically.  Slick.

Original idea came from Paul Thurrott on his blog.