Free File Hosting is a type of web hosting service which allows you to host files free of charge. You can use a free file hosting service to share files with family, friends or other people online and you can also use it to host files for backup purposes.
There has always been a demand fro free file hosting but such services started exploding after 2004 when dozens started to appear. Today, there are a number of established free file hosting services which are the most reliable and frequently used. There are also a number of smaller free file hosting services which one needs to be caucious before using as they can disappear overnight and you could lose your files.
Typically, a free file hosting service will host any type of media file or any type of file generally if you put it into an archive. This means you can share photos, music, etc. Many people use free file hosting to host copyrighted files which is against the terms of service of all free file hosting services but most often not inforced as they will typically remove files only upon complaint from the copyright author.
You can generally upload a file that is up to 100 MB in size so if you need to upload large files, the most common option is to create an archive using multiple volumes of say 100 MB each.
The downsides of free file hosting include the presence of advertisements on download pages, delays when downloading of minutes, download unavailability due to high server load and removal of files without notice.
For the reasons above, using a free file hosting service for uploading files that you don’t plan to keep on your computer is always a bad idea as these services should only be used to upload files you have other copies of.
Today, the most popular free file hosting services are, in no particular order – MediaFire.com, FileFactory.com, YouShare.com and of course, MegaUpload.com and RapidShare.com