SkyDrive is a service of Microsoft for storing and sharing photos and documents online – “in the cloud”. If you have a Windows Live ID, or a “Microsoft account”, you have a SkyDrive with 25 GB of free cloud storage. With a Hotmail email account you already have a SkyDrive.
If you need to set up a new Microsoft account, go to this site:
http://explore.live.com/skydrive then click on Get SkyDrive.
You will be presented with the usual sign-up form with fields for your name and other information. You can get a new email account, @hotmail.com or @live.com, or you can register with your current email address from another provider.
If you register an existing email account, you will receive a confirming email and need to click a link to verify that you indeed have that account. You sign in to your account at skydrive.com.
A brand new SkyDrive looks about like the illustration here.
You will see three folders, Documents, Public, and Pictures. You can add additional folders. The sharing of the Documents and Pictures folders are set to “Just me”, that is, they are not shared. The Public folder, as you might guess, is set to “Everyone (public)”.
If you have an older, existing account, the array of folders might be a little different.
Now you are ready to store documents and photos in your SkyDrive. How you do that is covered in another article.
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© 2011 Ludwig Keck
