2. Local or Remote?

Cloud storage is a service offered by specialist companies. They store and manage your data at a remote site, usually a large data centre.

When you want to gain access to your data or files you connect to the cloud storage servers over a network such as the internet.

Data centres charge a fee to manage your data. They may also charge money for transferring data back and forth between their servers and your computer.

The servers at the data centre uses thousands of secondary storage devices such as magnetic hard disks and solid state drives to retain the data of all of their customers.