Good online backup solution?

[Morgoth]

I've been having various PC troubles over past year, and have also witnessed family members' hard drives go from usable to pretty much inaccessible without warning. I'm getting a tad paranoid about my data, after two of my windows installations in a year developed problems, even though I've lost nothing yet. (fingers crossed the lack of loss will continue)

Anyhow, the end result is I'm paranoid about my data. The total amount of stuff I'd like to back up is around 2TB spread over 4 HDs, though the newer stuff is higher priority as technically I have the older stuff on DVD+R.

I could buy a 2TB external drive, and would, if it wasn't for the fact that the prices for such a thing are currently rather high due to Thailand flooding. I also like the idea that even if my house burns down, an online backup would save my data.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to good places to backup your data online? Particularly good would be a place where you also get the opportunity to link to the stuff you upload and it remains accessible to you as a file wherever you are.

[GoNz0]

while you may have 2tb you need to see what can't be replaced/downloaded again and you will find a few gb of stuff you cannot afford to lose.

[Morgoth]

I have hundreds of gbs of photographs, and I would rather back them all up than go through the messy business of trying to pick and choose which ones to save. I need a lot of space regardless.

[Disturbedguy]

Would an account on Dropbox not allow this?

[mycarsavw]

Dropbox - $19.99 a month for up to 100 Gb

AmazonS3 - $0.14 per GB when you're transferring 1TB/month. Month 1 costs will be ~$280 then after that relatively low.

There's the free introductory 12mo offer too - http://aws.amazon.com/free/

Picasa/Google - 2TB for $512.00 USD per year.

Livedrive - http://www.livedrive.com/ - various packages, 2Tb is "only" £9.95 a month

I'd look at a personal NAS of some sort, host it offsite (parents, in laws, mate, office, work, local friendly datacentre?) and transfer your goodies across bit by bit.

[pipTheGeek]

I have in the past had success with Mozy, and I've recently tried Carbonite and another one whose name I can't remember. I haven't actually got round to choosing one though.

One warning though, Mozy and Carbonite (and probably the other similar online backup rather than file sharing apps) offer home and business versions. The home versions usually won't backup from network shares so you need to have everything on one PC.

[spoon_]

50 bucks a year buys you unlimited "cloud" storage with CrashPlan:

https://www.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl

Been their customer for 2+ years now, got 1.5TB of data backed up without any issues.

Client software runs on my NAS which is 24/7 so every hour my stuff goes to the cloud [changes/new files]. Initial backup is a pain but if you're not willing to wait that long [depending on your upstream speed] you can get it seeded ie. 125 bucks for 1TB and they send you a USB drive!

Win/win really. Cannot fault their service whatsoever.

[Pancake]

Use Google+ for photos, unlimited and no size limits.

Then i have 21GB on my Free Dropbox account

Then there is the RAID5 on the HTPC/Server

And then Evernote for small things that nee to be backed up like college work

[vinnyT]

Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.co.uk/) is good at £41.95 per year, but you have to take into account how long it will take to upload it, this depends on how fast your isp sets your upspeed (eg my isp is 6mbps dl, but only 512kbps upstream).

Also, you may have a monthly bandwidth cap that your gb of photos may take you over, in this case you would have to split your backups to account for this (or pay extra) but this main backup should be a one time event, as subsequent backups would be incremental.

[jim]

Seems overkill to me.

Your photos are never going to change. You took them a few years ago, they're exactly the same now. You say you have 'hundreds of gigs', so buy a 1TB drive, stick all your photos on there, post it or give it to a friend or relative (even encrypt it if you're worried about security) and then you're protected against fire/theft/flood/alien abduction.

That way, you can cut the amount you need to backup online and the more you cut, the cheaper it becomes.

[Biscuit]

I'd look at a personal NAS of some sort, host it offsite (parents, in laws, mate, office, work, local friendly datacentre?) and transfer your goodies across bit by bit.

Or transfer them at home before you send it to them and set up some form of synchronization schedule. Im sure there is tonnes of software that can help make this as streamlined as possible and its defiantly what i would do... if hard drive prices were not so damn high!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2TB-SEAGAT...item4ab0d163af

Could be a savoir for the time being though?

[Bluecube]

I don't know about prices for 2tb but try out Sugarsync. I find it to be fast and flexible.

Personally, I agree with advice about a NAS. Or even archiving everything to a hard drive and packing it away safely.

[pipTheGeek]

I have considered using an external drive for photo backup. My worry is that I won't remember to keep the backup up-to-date. Even if I do there will probably be quite a lag between new photos going on the PC and them getting backed up. For photos I am also considering using DVDs, but I don't know if I would be disciplined enough to check the backups regularly.

For me, backup needs to be totally automatic and, for the photos at least, pretty quick after they get put on the PC becuase I don't want to lose any.

Then there is the RAID5 on the HTPC/Server

Remember that drive failure is not the only way to lose data. One of the most common reasons to reach for the backup is that you accidently deleted it.
In my case all my data is on a "server" in the living room at the end of the coffee table, I'd guess its most at risk of a stray coffee and I don't think RAID will help with that.

[Pancake]

I have considered using an external drive for photo backup. My worry is that I won't remember to keep the backup up-to-date. Even if I do there will probably be quite a lag between new photos going on the PC and them getting backed up. For photos I am also considering using DVDs, but I don't know if I would be disciplined enough to check the backups regularly.

For me, backup needs to be totally automatic and, for the photos at least, pretty quick after they get put on the PC becuase I don't want to lose any.


Remember that drive failure is not the only way to lose data. One of the most common reasons to reach for the backup is that you accidently deleted it.
In my case all my data is on a "server" in the living room at the end of the coffee table, I'd guess its most at risk of a stray coffee and I don't think RAID will help with that.

But how would that happen?

[chrestomanci]

50 bucks a year buys you unlimited "cloud" storage with CrashPlan:

https://www.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl

Client software runs on my NAS which is 24/7 so every hour my stuff goes to the cloud [changes/new files]. Initial backup is a pain but if you're not willing to wait that long [depending on your upstream speed] you can get it seeded ie. 125 bucks for 1TB and they send you a USB drive!

I have also been a crashplan customer for the past 6 months or so.

I also tried running the client software on my NAS, but was unsuccessful, as my NAS has an ARM CPU and only 256Mb of RAM. The client software is Java, so in theory should run anywhere, but in practice it was to bloaty to run on a computer without much memory.

Also, you may have a monthly bandwidth cap that your gb of photos may take you over, in this case you would have to split your backups to account for this (or pay extra) but this main backup should be a one time event, as subsequent backups would be incremental.

Upload rate and caps is a problem with any online backup service. I have about 70 Gb stored with Crashplan, and I rember that it took quite a while to upload, for example, when I uploaded my digital photo collection (about 20Gb, I had to leave my System on for a week for the upload to finish). Because of the slow data transfer times, if I ever lost all my data I think I would probably have to upgrade my broadband to the fastest speed possible in order to get it back in reasonable time.

[GoNz0]

cost effective would be a pair of 2tb backup drives, leave one at a family members house and rotate once a week.