What's your offsite backup solution? - Ask DLS

Jungle Disk and S3 do look interesting, but without block level backups, you're going to be moving A LOT more data than is necessary (which is going to increase your cost).

I use Carbonite to backup about 35Gb and I'd recommend it highly. Simple, visual indication of what's backed up. Low memory footprint, throttles it's bandwidth use when you're doing other stuff on your internet connection. I still backup to an external USB drive, but I feel a lot happier that my data's offsite in case of fire, theft or alien invasion. Probably impractical past 100GB or so - but that depends on your connection speed.

For online backup and storage info, there is an excellent site. Check it out:

http://www.BackupReview.info

rapidshare have some problems with law at this moment. they could be closed soon. i moved my files to megaupload.com and file2upload.net to save them

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There's this little tiny problem with most on-line backup systems. They backup what you have on your hard drive NOW. If you delete a file thinking 'oh it's backed up and I'll just pull it down if I ever need it', sorry. In 30 days (most backup systems), the backup copy is deleted.

About the only system I've found that's even close is at DreamHost. Right now, you need to have a DH account (meaning you sign up for space on a web server + get a domain), you can get something called 'Files Forever'. At $0.04/meg, you can push up whatever you want and they'll keep it forever (or until they go out of business whichever comes first). If you need to secure your files and need to guarantee you will be able to get them no matter what, this is about as close as you'll come.

The buy a 2nd usb hd and copy to that isn't a good solution because if you loose your house to fire, flood, or whatever, your backup is trashed too.

I run the IT shop for a small business across several countries in Europe. We tried both Carbonite and Mozy, since our research showed these were the top two brands in online backup for consumers, SOHOs and SMBs. Mozy has a few additional bells and whistles (which tend to make it more complicated), but we went with Carbonite since it was far easier to set up, easier to maintain (no fiddling with scheduling), cheaper, restored much more quickly and simply, and is available in French and German as well as English. They even have a Japanese version (although of no use to my colleagues on the Continent, it's always a good sign to see a company has sophisticated development process that it can support double-byte character localisation). I hear Carbonite will even be shipping Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch versions in the near future, which will make my associates even happier. Carbonite is investing in the future, but with EMC's recent acquisitin of Mozy I bet things will slow down.

Nothing Beats Crashplan... hands down the best

S3 + JD and just to be clear, as far as I know, JD isn't Amazon's, but I get what the post was saying.

I've been using Carbonite for a couple years now. It's been working great so far, I've had to do one major restore, and I was expecting it to take a long time, but it was surprisingly fast.

For the price, it's hard to beat. Unlimited storage and bandwidth. The initial backup of course took a while, but now, it keeps everything backed up pretty much real time. with hardly any noticeable CPU or bandwidth usage.

I looked at Mozy, but I think they had some kind of limit/restriction, and I was interested in the "unlimited/unrestricted" feature of Carbonite.

I've just started using a new hybrid system that I kind of stumbled on. I bought a 500Gig External HD and now use it to back up two computers on separate partitions. Then I use Carbonite to back up the external drive. So far it's worked well, although I haven't had to implement a full backup of either computer yet.

Another strong vote here for JungleDisk + S3. Linux, Windows, and Mac clients for a one time purchase were a big plus. I can use it for backups from multiple machines, and use it a as a big shared drive across platforms as well. Another selling point for me was the access to unlimited space, yet only pay for what you use pricing (at $0.15/GB stored + network charges). Their client includes backup software, or you can use your own. Overall, it's been amazingly painless and affordable so far.

I've been using Carbonite, and I have to say it has been just about perfect. It stays out of the way. it doesn't require scheduling because it automatically goes to sleep when I'm using the computer for other tasks. When I go to restore a file, it takes seconds. I bought a new PC a few months ago and used Carbonite to load all my old data onto it. The process started instantly, ran about as fast as my DSL would permit, and in a few hours my new PC had all the files and folders that were on my old PC. There aren't a lot of techie bells and whistles. But it just works. I pray that the company is successful because they have a great product.

Mozy started out working well for me and my Mac, but now that I'm a paid customer, trying to back up my entire hard drive, it is really starting to suck. I get the same behavior a previous poster noted - long idle times, high CPU usage, slow backups, and lots of disconnects. I've been babying it along for weeks now, and I've still backed up only 20 gigs. I've seen no apparent improvements - I think the acquisition has doomed them. Too bad, it looked so promising.

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