So I really need to back up my computer files: photos, documents, etc.
I could copy the files onto a CD or memory stick, but one of the reasons I’m backing things up is “in case the house burns down - God forbid, knock on wood - and the computer melts with it,” and of course a CD sitting right next to the computer is no help at all in that scenario.
I’d like to look into an online backup services, but good sweet Jeebus there’s a lot of them. Free options! (I heard there are ones from Google? Yahoo?) Paid options! (Carbonite? Mozy?) All sorts of options…!
Would the good Dopers care to offer their opinions on the matter? Personal anecdotes entirely welcome. I’d like to know if anyone’s had security problems with someone hacking into their stored files, things like that.
The fifty bucks a year that Carbonite charges sounds entirely reasonable, and I’m frankly a little leery of the free services. You get what you pay for, right?
I’ve been using Jungle Disk & Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. I have about 8gb of stuff uploaded and I have the background software run once a day to upload changes. The initial upload fee cost around $5 but since then, I’ve been paying about $3.60 per month for the daily backup.
It’s a little more complicated than mozy but it’s worked out to be cheaper for me given the amount of stuff I want backed up. In fact, I’ll probably add another 10gb of stuff just because it’s so cheap.
Aside from that, it’s been extremely reliable and I’m very happy with the service.
Microsoft’s Skydrive, service gives you 25GB of free space. Pretty good deal. And with the IE plugin you can just drag and drop files to save them. Limits are: 25gb of total space, 50MB limit per file.
Mozy is great and you can technically access your files from anywhere if you really needed to. It is free for some of the stuff you are describing but unlimited home backups are only about $5 a month. That is a steal in my opinion. I have had to do an almost full restore from it and it worked just fine. The only downside is that the initial backup takes a really, really long time as in a week for 50gb but it doesn’t interfere with anything and I never notice it running at all. You just have to leave your computer on. Nightly backups only take a few minutes. I recommend it especially if you only need enough space to qualify for the free plan.
I like Syncplicity myself. It just works. It has other features like an online file browser and integration with Google Apps and Zoho and such, but in the end I just like its simplicity.
If you want to give it a try, use this referral link to get some extra free space (I think it gives you 1GB extra?).
I intend to start using one of the services in the near future but I want full control of what doesn’t get backed up. I keep sensitive information in print form and backed up on a floppy. the floppy drive is only connected when I update the file. I try to make it difficult for hackers to get my information.
I just started using Carbonite - tested both it and Mozy, Carbonite seems to be less of a resource hog on my computer which seal the deal for me.
It’s important to realise that it’s a backup system, not an archive. For example, you can’t dump all your photo files there, and then delete them off your computer, as the online backup services syncs with your hard drive and will recognise that the photo files are missing. It keeps a copy of deleted files for 90 days, but after that, you’re SOL. So I need to use an external hard drive as well, to archive all my files.
But it’s perfect for me as I’m travelling, and only back home every couple of months. I don’t bring an external hard drive with me as it’s something else to pack and possibly lose. I haven’t had any problems with security so far, but I encrypt all my important stuff using TrueCrypt anyway, and just upload the volume into Carbonite. I also haven’t had a major crash yet (touch wood) so just tested restoring a couple of files. However, I’ve heard that full restoration is a major hassle, with both Carbonite and Mozy. But I figure that you’ve got to expect that, given that I’ve currently backed up 25 gigs on my Carbonite account. It’s another reason why I keep the external hard drive option as well.
BTW, I got a pretty good deal using a coupon on the Retail Me Not site, which seems to be still available.
