Online backup services....

[JETA]

I'm curious if anyone has used an online backup service.

Some are so expensive there's no way, but Mozy and Carbonite I think are reasonable.

Anyone have any experience with any online backup service?? I'd love to hear all about it.:thumbsup:

[Liz]

It's interesting you posted that today. I've uploaded and stored my photos to Smugmug.com for a few years - cost about $28 a year. Just a few days ago there was an announcement that they are now "storing many different types of files". Here is the link for more info - and the price seems very low. I'm not sure if what you're talking about would fit in here, but it you're interested, take a look. Smugmug has been around for years - and has a good reputation.

http://www.smugmug.com/price/smugvault.mg

Liz

[mwfanelli2]

I'm curious if anyone has used an online backup service.

Some are so expensive there's no way, but Mozy and Carbonite I think are reasonable.

Anyone have any experience with any online backup service?? I'd love to hear all about it.:thumbsup:

I used Carbonite during a 30 day trial.

The good: It was reliable and did not affect the working of the computer, no big slowdowns. It was easy to see which files were backed up. No glitches or bugs were encountered.

The bad: After 22 days, it had only backed up about half my files. This is using a T1 line during the day (super fast) and consumer-level broadband (3MB) overnight. Don't even think about dial-up!

I found that one of those pocket-sized USB-powered 250G drives and Acronis Home software was a better solution and also really fast, I can do incremental or differential saves. I get four full backups (one per week, incrementals each other day) on the one drive. The cost was really not much more than Carbonite.

[mn shutterbug]

I'm probably missing something here, but with the cost of external drives so low, why pay an online service for something you can do yourself?

I've got a laptop that started getting silly on me if I grabbed it in the wrong place, so I had to buy a new one. The HD is still good so I'll use the bad laptop as a backup device.

[JETA]

Thanks for the replies. Smugmug once you add up the gigs of storage I need and their prices it's ridiculous.

I have a backup hard drive. What I worry about is it dying, my puter dying or not backing up right away and losing all of my work. I have many big projects going and always obsess over what would happen if I lost all of the info.

I like the idea of something doing the backup if I forget and backing up any file I changed. I also love the idea it's all off site immediately.

What I'm reading from Michael though is it's a slow process..... GAH!

[mn shutterbug]

I forgot about the forgetting part. :idea:

[Didache]

I have used A Drive for a little while .. it's free for 50 Gb. I use it for storing Audio-visuals because I can email people who wish to download them (they are way too big to email) but it can be used for just plain storage. It is a little fiddly to navigate, but it works and in the time I've used it, there hasn't been any down-time or any problems - in other words, it works. If 50 Gb is enough for you, I would have a look.

http://www.adrive.com/

Cheers
Mike

[JETA]

Thanks Mike. That may be a good place for all of my slideshow music and pics.

Unfortunately I need around 300 gigs of space.

I'm trying Carbonite right now. As Michael said it's slow. It's not going to work.

I'd like to try Mozy, but they make you pay up front so there's no way to know if it's sluggish or not.

[Franglais]

I'm probably missing something here, but with the cost of external drives so low, why pay an online service for something you can do yourself?

I've got a laptop that started getting silly on me if I grabbed it in the wrong place, so I had to buy a new one. The HD is still good so I'll use the bad laptop as a backup device.

300GB is a lot of data and I would not propose an online service for that sort of volume. Remember that with normal consumer ADSL connections you get fast download to your computer but doing an upload to a central system the speed is 10 times slower.

For my image library I have THREE copies on external hard drives:

1. The original which I keep in my apartment
2. A backup copy on hard drive which is in the cellar 4 floors below, updated about every 3 months
3. A disaster recover copy on a hard drive at my sister's place 500 miles away. I swap it with the one in the cellar every year

PLUS I make a copy to DVD-R as I add new images.

It's a bit of work to maintain all that but I feel I'm protected. I always have a doubt with outsourcers - you think they're doing their job and then ooops sorry we had an accident...

[GB1]

300 GB of data? errr.. yeah.. that's a heck of a data backup requirement ! Is it really stuff you want/need to keep, or are you like me, too busy to sort through it to determine what's important or not..?

Here's my research on the subject:

- Backup hard drives at home are OK for redundancy, but what about fire and theft?

- Carbonite only works with Windows XP and I run 2000 at home, so I couldn't even try it.

- I installed the 2 GB trial version of IDrive. It automatically scans designated folders and backs up, but guess what else it does on my machine..? It creates numerous extra processes (net.ext, net1.exe, and CMD.EXE processes) that consume incredible amounts of memory and bring your system to its knees! It keeps creating new ones too! Last night I had 90 of each and my system needed to be rebooted. I just contacted tech support and they have a hard time believing it. But when I kill the IDrive process, everything's fine.

- Many services encrypt your data, which is good, but this probably increases the file size too (I would guess), making the size issue even bigger.

After all this, I am currently doing this instead. I use Powweb.com to host my personal web site. They just went to an unlimited storage / unlimited bandwidth plan, about $90 for hosting and all the space you can eat. I created a password protected folder up there called Backups and store only my best images and their variations in a password protected (256 bit) ZIP file, organized by subject in sub folders, and by sub subject and date in the file names. I just place the ZIP files up there for storage. For each file archive ZIP, I upload a corresponding JPG file, say 800x600 pixels, with the exact same name but with a JPG extension instead of a ZIP extension. Then I use an automatic Flash program to display all the folders and images (check out FlashNifties.com). I can see what I have by looking at the JPGs, and know that the corresponding full sized backups are the same name, just with a ZIP ext. I upload the files as I get time to review them, zip them, create the JPEG version if needed, and properly name them.

The above is a manual process which may be laborious, but it also forces me to examine what I am saving. In the era of digital files, you may go out to a park and shoot 300 shots but there may only be 30 worth keeping, or maybe only 3 ! Why store all that stuff for nothing?

G