Get a second hard drive for free with SkyDrive!

At the moment, if you want to access files on your hard drive remotely, you need to buy a Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive. But they’re expensive, and if you only need a reasonable amount of storage space, then Microsoft has come up with a solution.

Windows Live SkyDrive - a bit of a mouthful, if we’re honest - is Microsoft’s latest addition to the Windows Live family, and gives you storage space for files that can be accessed from any computer, provided you’ve got an internet connection.

The interface is very easy to understand. You get four different folders to store your files (currently) - Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos, and you can grant your friends or family access to them, if you so wish.

There’s also an option to create a public folder in which you can put files that you want to share with the rest of the world, but where only you can edit them, not too dissimilar to websites like Flickr or YouTube.

You get 500MB of storage for free, which is pretty reasonable, and provided it doesn’t take yonks for your files to upload or download, it could be very successful.

Since you might be storing your confidential documents on here, make sure your Windows Live ID password is secure. You can alter its level of security by going to https://account.live.com/, logging in, and resetting your password within. When you change your password, a Strength bar will indicate just how secure your password is with a Weak, Medium, or Strong level.

If SkyDrive sounds like your cup of tea, why no try out the beta version at http://skydrive.live.com/.