SkyDrive Delivers Solid Cloud Storage Integration With Office 2013

REVIEW: Microsoft SkyDrive delivers reliable cloud data file storage closely integrated with Office 2013, despite some puzzling bugs that Microsoft should patch promptly.

I don’t know why it didn’t work. But eventually it would start working again and all was fine. But there was a bigger, more troubling bug that I can’t deal with and I had to take measures to prevent a loss. Several times while working on this very article, I would take screenshots for the accompanying slideshow. I’m sort of low-tech on my screenshots; I just press Alt+PrintScreen to capture a window, and I then paste the image into IrfanView.

I was saving all my images into a subfolder under SkyDrive that I made specifically for this article. And on three separate occasions I went back and those image files simply weren’t there. The first time I wrote it off as user error, figuring I had saved the file in a different folder by mistake. But then it happened a second time an hour later. This time when I noticed the file was gone, I still had IrfanView open with the image, and at the top was the full path and filename of where I saved it. I looked at it and it was indeed the SkyDrive folder. But it wasn’t there. So I saved it again. This time the file stuck.

But, after completing this article, I came back to this problem and noticed something odd: The files weren’t totally gone. SkyDrive maintains a recycle bin that you can access from the Web interface. I happened to look in there and lo-and-behold there were the missing files. At this point I’m not sure how they ended up there, nor am I confident that if the problem happens again the files won’t disappear altogether. So I’m keeping a separate backup folder on my computer and I periodically do a full backup there too of my SkyDrive folders, especially with important files pertaining to my work. I strongly encourage you to do the same until we hear from Microsoft on this and they issue a patch.

In addition to native Windows 8 support for SkyDrive, you can also get apps for SkyDrive for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. However, there have been some issues regarding the iPhone and iPad.

Additionally, there’s an API so third-party developers can integrate their apps. (If there’s interest from readers, I can provide a review of the API tools.)

Security

Before wrapping up this review, let’s talk about security. Over the past few years of being involved in tech journalism and hearing from readers, I’ve heard many times people voice concerns about saving their files in “the cloud.” Indeed, there have been problems where services have lost files.

Here’s my brief opinion on that, and this is strictly an opinion: Cloud storage services may lose files, but is that really a problem? In general, I’m very meticulous about my backups. I back up to multiple locations. I have thumb drives that I back up to for immediate problems.