Source: http://maketecheasier.com

Dropbox, Sugarsync and Zumodrive are some of the great online storage services that you can use to store, sync and access your files right from your desktop. However, they only offer a meagre free storage space (less than 5GB) that may not even be enough to backup your MP3 files. On the other hand,Windows Live Skydrive provides a whopping 25GB of online storage space, much more than the storage space of some of the 1st generation netbook and it is even enough to install a whole operating system on it. As good as it seems, there is one limitation. Skydrive is purely web based and does not provide any desktop-based application for you to sync your computer data with the cloud.

If you are looking to access your Skydrive account from your desktop, Gladinet is the application for you.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop is an application that allows you to mount cloud storage services as local folders and integrates online applications with the local desktop. It supports services such as Amazon S3,  Google docs, Picasa, Adrive, and of course Skydrive.

Download Gladinet Starter edition (FREE)

Start the installer. At the end of the installation, it will prompt you to do some initial configuration.

Select a drive letter for Gladinet to mount to. Make sure that the drive letter does not conflict with any existing drive. Click OK to continue.

In the next window, click on the Mount Disk Storage

Under the service provider, select Windows Live Skydrive from the dropdown bar. Of course, if you are using other storage services, you can also configure them the same way here.

Enter your login credential.

You can now access your Skydrive right from the desktop.

The advantage of using Gladinet is that it mount the online storage as a network drive in your system (and it does not do a sync), so even if you computer has less than 25GB of space, you can still mount it and access all your data (you will need an Internet connection though). In addition, the ability to mount several online storage services mean that you won’t ever face the problem of insufficient storage space again.

Gladinet comes with a Starter edition (free), Professional edition ($29.99) and a Premium edition that is due to be released soon. Personally, I have found that the Starter edition contains features more than I ever need and is sufficient for me. However, if you require more features, you can always upgrade to the Professional edition easily.