The Truth About SkyDrive Live & Promo Codes

There's a lot of confusion floating out there about Microsoft's answer to Google Drive and Dropbox, SkyDrive Live. We get a lot of inquiries seeking out promo codes specifically for SkyDrive, and we hate to disappoint, but currently there are no promo codes that will expand your cloud storage on SkyDrive for free. New users can sign up and get 7 GB of storage free. 

If you're an existing user, and you signed up for SkyDrive before April 22, 2012, you can upgrade your storage to 25 GB for free. It's unclear when this particular promotion will end, though.

You're In Luck If You're A Student Or Teacher

If you are a student or teacher with a .edu email address, you can get 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, in addition to the 7 GB of free storage included with sign-up. The only catch is that you have to sign up for Office 365, which gives you access to the Microsoft Office Suite, which includes, Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and One Note for free for three months. You can get an extra three months if you share the offer on Facebook. You'll also get three free months of Office 365 University, which allows you access to Office applications on up to two PCs or Macs, and 60 free Skype minutes you can use all over the world. After your trial is up, a four year subscription costs $79.99.

Try Out Other Cloud Storage Services

If you're hell-bent on maxing out the free cloud storage services, that's pretty easy. Here's a short, incomplete list of other storage services that offer free storage to get you in the door:

• Amazon offers 5 GB for free on Amazon Cloud Drive. 
• Apple iCloud offers 5 GB for free. 
• Box offers 5 GB for free. They also occasionally do 50 GB giveaways on their Facebook page, so follow them for the latest news. 
• Dropbox gives you 2 GB for free. You can get an extra 500 MB of storage for every friend you refer, up to 16 GB.
• Google Drive gives you 5 GB for free. Google Docs files, and files that have been converted to Google Docs files do not count against this limit. You get 1 GB of photo storage with Picasa Web Albums, and unlimited storage of videos (up to 15 minutes) and pictures with Google+.
• MediaFire starts you off with 10 GB for free, and you can earn up to 50 GB. 
• MiMedia gives you 7 GB for free. With their current promotion, you can get 10 GB of storage for free with promo code XLV46-LRJR8.
• SpiderOak gives you 2 GB for free. 

If you're losing your mind trying to track down all the cloud services you signed up for, never fear: try JoliCloud, which brings all your different cloud services into one space.