Can I use iCloud, Google drive, Dropbox, or Onedrive as my main storage?

As much as we like to think it’s of great importance to keep our hard-copied documents (photos inclusive) safe, converting all to soft copy and keeping them in a secured drive is still the best bet.

Cloud storage has become very attractive and appealing with firms like Google, Dropbox, Apple and Microsoft offering online storage of up to gigabytes and even terabytes which creates avenue of easy access for users who would like to access their files on different devices without a use of any peripherals like external drives.

The fact is; these cloud services only create and save a copy of what you have on your hard disk or portable ssd. Meaning in a kind of way, they are only for back up and not main storage.

Let me quickly chip this in; while dropbox, google drive and onedrive can work on virtually any device, it is important to note that iCloud requires that your Mac should run on at least Yosemite or an iOS device running at least iOS 8 to function.

Now let me answer the question above; you cannot make this cloud services your main storage. The most you can do is to make the folders on them the default storage for your documents, photos and some other files. In my own opinion, it is not wise to store your important documents in cloud and here are my reasons:

Free doesn't mean safe:

It is not safe to put your trust in free stuffs as changes can be effected with little or no prior notice. Nothing of great value is without a price tag so do not be deceived.

Nothing is really safe on the internet:

The absolutely guaranteed way to make sure something doesn’t get accessed or tampered with on the internet is to make sure it goes no where near the internet. With hackers, research and technological development growing new branches by the day, you can not be so sure of safety of anything on the internet.