I am an avid user of the cloud and cloud storage. Dropbox, having been synced to my external hard drives on two computers, is my default “hard drive.” I am also an avid user of Evernote. I mean to use Google Drive and my other cloud accounts more, but the hardest thing is to remember where my “current” versions of files are. So I stuck with just Dropbox for files and Evernote for notes.

What I kept looking for and needing was a way to have everything stay connected. I thought about adding my Dropbox folder inside my Drive folder, but I was afraid of what would happen to the several machines that I only sync certain folders with.

As you can see, I spend quite a bit of time contemplating file management setups! So naturally I was interested when I read a review of Cloud HQ and decided to give it a shot. Here’s what I learned about their cloud storage solutions:

You start with creating a free trial account on one of their tiers that vary by the number of accounts and paired connections you need. Then you pick what services you would like to sync with one another.

I began with Dropbox, as it is my lifeline to my world and my work. Since I wanted to have more access to my Google Drive files and have them up to date, as well as having better access to my Dropbox files on my Chromebook, I paired these two first.

Once in the Synchronization Pairs screen, simply select which accounts – and which folders in those accounts – to pair together. In addition, I selected my SkyDrive account to one-way sync with Google Drive, and to have it convert my documents to Drive documents upon sync. With both pairs, I also chose to create backup archives in the process.

I have far more cloud storage accounts then I know what to do with. Being able to use them and sync things allows me to take advantage of them. Now, instead of always changing where I am saving my Microsoft Word documents, I can actually use the cloud service that they offer, then just sync it to where I am more familiar. At the end of the day, what I really have is more options and more comfort.

Really, if you are someone who cares about file management and/or data safety, this is a service you should look into. I work from multiple places and the idea that I can just hit save in my office to save something to Dropbox, then go open it on my laptop, then save it again and be able to open that same file in Google Drive on my Chromebook and have each time be the most recent version of that file, is an amazing feat in technology.