1. Dropbox

Needless to say, our favorite app – Dropbox tops the list. The free account comes with a 2GB space, but you can gain extra storage space (up to 8GB) by referring friends to use the service, or to get connected via any social means. The good thing about Dropbox is that it is available in among all platforms so you can easily drop a file in any of the computer and access it immediately in your mobile phone.

In the Android app, it doesn’t download and sync all the files like it does on the computer. It only shows a list of the files you have in the cloud and download the necessary file only when you need it. Similarly, you can upload files from the Dropbox app. One caveat though, it does not automatically sync the files/folders that you placed in the Dropbox folder.

One additional feature of the Dropbox app is that you can create files (Picture, Video, Audio, Text file, Folder) from your phone. This means that you can quickly take a photo and sync it to the Dropbox folder.

Market link

2. Zumo Drive

If you are unwilling to shell out money for online storage, then ZumoDrive will not be very attractive to you. The free account of ZumoDrive comes only with 1GB of storage space. (Update: Zumodrive comes with 2GB of free storage space as well.) Nevertheless, ZumoDrive does have several tricks up its sleeves. First of all, ZumoDrive supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and Palm Pre. This make managing your files much easier. Secondly, it comes with an inbuilt music player so you can play/stream your music directly from your ZumoDrive account. It saves you space in your SD card and allows you to listen to your music at the same time. Cool.

Market link

3. SugarSync

SugarSync offers 5GB for its free account, so it is a waste if you don’t sign up for it. Regular SugarSync will find the Android version familiar, as it comes with the usual Magic Briefcase and all connected devices.

When it first launches, it will scan your photo gallery and prompt you to backup all your photos to SugarSync. Unless you select “Yes” or “Never”, you will receive the prompt everytime you run the SugarSync app. Selecting “Yes” wil upload your photos in the background.

In my opinion, SugarSync is functionally similar to Dropbox, except that it provides 5GB of free storage space (3GB more than Dropbox). Both of them support multiple platforms, but Dropbox has the slight advantage with Linux support, while SugarSync don’t.

Market link

4. Box.net

If you are looking for a no-frill app with simple interface, then Box.net is the one for you. The Android version of Box.net is just a simple implementation of its web interface. After you have login to the app, you can access or upload files to your web folder.

Similar to the Dropbox app, you can create media content from within the app. Tap on “Menu -> Create” and you can choose to create either audio, video, or image file. Selecting the audio content will launch a voice recorder while the video content will activate your camera in video mode.

The free version comes with 5GB of storage space.

Market link

5. Sorami

Of all the cloud based storage services, Microsoft’s Skydrive is the most general, giving you a whopping 25GB free storage space. The bad thing is, it is purely web based and doesn’t offer any tool for its users to access it from the desktop (or phone). Sorami is an implementation of Skydrive by third party developer. It allows you to access your Skydrive folder and download/upload files to it. This app is still in beta, so there are many unpolished areas, such as slow uploading, doesn’t support simultaneous upload of multiple files etc. Nevertheless, this is your only choice if you are an active Skydrive user.

Market link

Just the above apps can give you an extra 38GB of storage space. What other ways do you use to gain extra storage space for your mobile device?

If you are looking to access your Skydrive account from your desktop, Gladinet is the application for you.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop is an application that allows you to mount cloud storage services as local folders and integrates online applications with the local desktop. It supports services such as Amazon S3,  Google docs, Picasa, Adrive, and of course Skydrive.

Download Gladinet Starter edition (FREE)

Start the installer. At the end of the installation, it will prompt you to do some initial configuration.

Select a drive letter for Gladinet to mount to. Make sure that the drive letter does not conflict with any existing drive. Click OK to continue.

In the next window, click on the Mount Disk Storage

Under the service provider, select Windows Live Skydrive from the dropdown bar. Of course, if you are using other storage services, you can also configure them the same way here.

Enter your login credential.

You can now access your Skydrive right from the desktop.

The advantage of using Gladinet is that it mount the online storage as a network drive in your system (and it does not do a sync), so even if you computer has less than 25GB of space, you can still mount it and access all your data (you will need an Internet connection though). In addition, the ability to mount several online storage services mean that you won’t ever face the problem of insufficient storage space again.

Gladinet comes with a Starter edition (free), Professional edition ($29.99) and a Premium edition that is due to be released soon. Personally, I have found that the Starter edition contains features more than I ever need and is sufficient for me. However, if you require more features, you can always upgrade to the Professional edition easily.

What other ways do you use to access Windows Live Skydrive?