online backup

looking for some advice.
i want to add an online backup service to my already used 3 small external drives.
it is mainly for photos, 97gb with more all the time. also small stuff like email address's, favorite links ect.
i have looked at sugarsync and liked it but 100gb storage is kinda pricey.

thanks!!

 

Greetings, barnacle...

Just so happens that Major Geeks offers 500MB of free online storage: check it out...looks like the paid upgrades are reasonable, too...

 

The problem with online storage is the upload speed is about one tenth as fast as download. It's OK for a few MB but GB - forget it.

 

i never considered the initial upload time. some say my 100gb could take weeks!!!
i am starting to think more redundant drives is my solution?

 

97GB isn't all that much these days. You can get a 500GB external drive for around $100. I have experience with the Western Digital Essential 500GB drive and it is fast and quiet, and there's virtually no setup---you just plug it in and go. I've written a batch file to write copies of changed/new files to the external drive and a double click takes care of making copies in about 5 seconds. One could also transfer the files to CDs, but an external hard drive is a lot easier and faster. Note that I keep copies of all files, not a single copy on an external drive. Any drive is subject to failure at some point so if it contains your only copies, you're up the creek.

I like external drives because of their convenience and because I have the data and not someone else. Though I'm sure the online backup services have good intentions, I'm equally sure that some of them will go belly up eventually.

 

Hi,
I just purchased a 1TB WD book this weekend on sale at Best Buys for $100! I paid over that for my 500GB WD Passport a few months back. They are very easy to use too.

 

Agreed: the discrete devices readily (and relatively cheaply) available today make it that much more of a shame when people 'forget' to back up their data...

The online backups, however, do come in handy in some instances: I keep a collection of tried-and-tested drivers, simple scanners, links, etc. online for use in the field...

 

I agree with the comments here about using external drives. Anyway, if you want to try an online backup service as a way to backup certain files, I suggest http://www.adrive.com/. They offer a free account which allows up to 50GB of storage space. More can be obtained for a fee (their Premium plan).

 

what i decided to do is to keep my external drives fresh (3 of them) and also use an online service just to be safe.
i will be visiting the states soon and will bring a drive with me. a friend has a super speedy connection and i can upload from his computer.
i chose CrashPlan,, but uploading 97gb from my system is estimated to take 66-78 days!

thanks for all the input!

 

what type of internet service would this be? what connection speed, especially the upload speed?

 

crashplan has a meter to give an estimate of how long the upload will take. for a large upload as mine, they suggest you use their 'seed' hard drive. mail it to them and they will upload from their site.
my connection is 256

 

What do you mean? Is it 256Kb/s upload?

 

One last thought, Barnacle__

Online storage is not necessarily a bad way to go. A good backup plan includes off-site storage in case of a catastrophe like a fire that destroys all your on-site equipment. Even though I prefer the convenience of external hard drives I didn't mention earlier that I have several of them and rotate one of them off site once a week. I also keep copies of very important files on memory sticks that are with me wherever I go.

Good luck.

 

No one could argue the sense of that, but how many of us have the patience and discipline to see it through, week after week? :-o

 

@Earthling
Yep, I agree with you, but every time I think about not doing it anymore I consider the consequences if I don't...if I had nothing really important on the PC, I probably wouldn't take such extreme measures. But I've been burned before and it's likely that the opportunity for being burned again will eventually present itself....of course, it will be something entirely different next time

 

I have found online just too slow to be of much use. Both comps here automatically backiup data to an external twice a day, and Acronis images of the system drives manually about once a month. The whole lot is automatically copied last thing to a NAS drive up in the loft. Burglar proof hopefully, but not fireproof.

 

Hi all, my name's Jennifer and I work for a leading UK online backup provider. There are a few comments in this thread making reference to slow upload speeds. Unfortunately this is a major downside to online backup as a tool for backing up general data. I read a blog recently of a friend who uses Mozy, whose initial upload took him almost six months to upload based on his internet connection. Most providers will warn of a slow initial upload, however it is worth noting that future uploads to the data centre should be incremental, where only changes will be backed up. For those of you with lots of static data, this may be good news for you.

I would recommend that you have a look at your data and suss out what you could not live without - your 'critical' data. This should decrease your data set dramatically this is the data you should ensure is backed up online. For the rest of your data (for me, this means music, movies etc) use your external drives. Any questions, I'd love to chat.

 

Greetings, Jennifer...

Good points, especially about the incremental updates...

Welcome to Major Geeks! :major

 

Thanks Caliban

 

500MB??? I got excited there after I misread it as 500GB LOL. I would say try out sugarsync free service, much better, as they give you 2GB and synchronisation between two computers

 

Carbonite is what we use for our resturant and my bosses laptop. Works great.

 

I know I'm late to the party on this thread; however I second Colemanguy's choice of Carbonite.

As noted in an earlier post, external HDDs only protect data against a crash. They do not protect your data in case of theft, fire or natural disaster.

Case in point: My house was broken into about a year ago; the theives walked off with two PCs and the external backup drives for each. Had it not been for my Carbonite subscription, I would have lost 10+ years of photos and portfolio materials that would have been impossible to replace.

As for the upload speeds, it's the nature of broadband. Your initial backup may take days (or even weeks) to complete depending on how many GB of data is involved. Incremental backups of new/changed documents will take (at most) a few minutes per day and is done automatically. The only time you might experience an issue is if you have several GB of new files at once (such as movies).