Being a university student, I’ve found out the hard way that you should never trust any one service to save your data.

Now that Microsoft is being sued by BSkyB over the name Skydrive, I thought now would be a great time to talk about the ways I back up my data.

Google Drive was the first cloud service I used. I used to mail my assignments to myself as well as using a flash drive, and once Google Drive became available, I just used that instead. It’s changed a lot, integrating Docs and Wave to be this fully functional collaborative online document storage tool. Because my university uses Google Apps, I have access to Google Drive through my school account which has made working on group projects that much easier. Everyone can see edits, make changes right from the browser and see the complete document instead of getting lost in multiple edits. The only downside with using Google Drive is that it doesn’t work very well with my Windows Tablet. Despite being browser based, it only really likes Chrome.

I’m currently using 22% (3.3 GB) of my 15 GB free storage.

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I got a Dropbox account because all the cool kids were doing it. Well, my friend Stuart helped me set it up as he wanted my referral bonus. So I threw things in there occasionally but never really committed to it. I lived so close to campus that transferring files was never such a big deal with my memory stick. Even when Samsung gave me the free 48GB of space, I struggled to fill it. All that I have there now are old photos, but that might have to move because I’m pretty sure my free space is going to end soon and I don’t feel like paying for Dropbox is the wisest decision.

I’m currently using 4.7% (2.4 GB) of my 50.75 GB free storage.

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Skydrive is my new best friend. I remember trying to use it when it first came out and being utterly underwhelmed. You had to install Silverlight I believe, and it was just slow, clunky and an all around terrible experience so I avoided it like the plague. When I bought my Windows Surface Tablet and had to use it I was blown away by how different it was. I absolutely love the Metro experience on a tablet, and I like how it’s translated into the web app. It’s not only easy to use but in my opinion really beautiful. I bought access to Office 365 which is Microsoft Office in the Cloud and I received 20 GB of space to play around with. I assume that’s for the four years I have the subscription, but who knows.

Integration with Office in the cloud is really awesome as it means that wherever I am my documents follow me and for someone who commutes a lot that is perfect. Google Docs is great, but it isn’t as fully functional as Microsoft Office. Even though Skydrive doesn’t have the awesome collaboration integration that Google Drive has, I find it so much easier to use. It works well with all my devices and plays nicely with all my browsers which I obviously like a lot. Even though it’s the last storage I’ve used, it’s the one that I like the most for my first choice for backing up.

I’m currently using 5.9% 1.6 GB) of my 27 GB of storage.

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These are the only three I’ve tried, but there are others. What do you think of these services? Are there others that you’ve tried and like better?