The Russian search engine Yandex is following the footsteps of Google by offering a new cloud storage service called Yandex Disk. It is similar to Google Drive and offers 10 GB of free cloud storage space upon sign up. The sign up, like in Google, is absolutely free. In addition, you can download the Yandex Disk client program for Windows and other platforms and integrate it with your operating system or mobile device.
You can visit the Yandex Disk website to download the Yandex Disk software. The download is available for Windows (XP and above), Mac, Android, iPhone and Windows phone. But before you can go any further, you need a Yandex account. You can click on the Log In button to login using you existing Yandex account or create a new Yandex account.
Singing up for a Yandex account is free. After you have signed up for a new account, it will automatically log you in and take you to the Yandex Disk page. If this does not happen, then you can visit the main Yandex Disk page and login to your account. On the Yandex Disk page, you will find an interface where you can upload, download and manage your Yandex Disk storage. You can see a thumbnail preview of most of the media files in your Yandex Disk storage. You can also click on a file and manage its access restrictions in order to share that file with others.
In the beginning, it offers you only 3 GB of free disk space. A 3 GB more is given when you install the Yandex Disk app in your mobile phone or on your desktop computer. A further 2 GB is given when you upload a file using the desktop application. Further 2 GB more is given when you tell your friends (over facebook) about Yandex Disk. In total, 10 GB free space is given to you for free in this manner.
The desktop client for Windows works like other cloud service clients. It creates a special disk drive in Windows called Yandex Disk. You can copy, delete or perform other file operations in the disk just like you would do with regular disks. This Yandex Disk in Windows is set to synchronize automatically with the cloud servers, so all the changes made on any device or through the web interface are synchronized everywhere.
Unlike other cloud storage services, Yandex Disk can be accessed through WebDAV in Windows, Mac and Linux without having to use their desktop client software. To connect to the WebDAV network drive, all you have to do is specify the remote folder as https://webdav.yandex.com and supply your Yandex username and passwords. Yandex also allows accessing the cloud storage through third party applications like Cooliris, ES File Explorer, Handy Backup and more.
You can visit http://disk.yandex.com/ to start using your free Yandex Disk cloud storage.