Online storage - any experience?

[UnSerpentQuiCourt]

Has anyone experience of using online storage to back up your computer? I never seem to have the time be bothered to back up everything onto themed CDs and therefore lose things when my current laptop dies.
Can you tell me: how much does it cost? how do you do it ie is it quite straghtforward? can you update things regularly?

I know a colleague of mine who uses an online service to back everything up. Think he pays around $10 a month.

Personally I use Dropbox to store important files and keep them synced across my various PC's. That's free for 2GB and you can pay for more. Using it is incredibly simple. It installs a Dropbox folder under My Documents and anything you store there is automatically synced.

I've thought about using online services for backing up everything but I've so much stuff it really wasn't realistic given my ADSL upload speed is a puny 1Mbit. In the end I've got a couple of external hard disks which I encrypt using Truecrypt. Every so often I copy everything across and give it to a neighbour who keeps it at his house. The logic being if I get burgled or heaven forbid my house burns to the ground, the data is intact.

In short, it really depends on how much data you have, the speed of your Internet upload and how often your data changes, as to how realistic an online service would be.

That sounds a bit complicated for me, although definitely secure ... I aso like the idea of being able to access my stuff from wherever I am, with any computer.

Can't you get an external hard drive and back up to that? I have one and my mac automatically backs up every day. I assume Windows must have a similar sort of programme that can run automatically.

External storage is perhaps best for collections of photos, downloaded music, and similar (files which are never going to change oce they are on your PC). A client of mine with thousands of family photos has an external drive and a scheduled task backs up everything once a week.

If there was a fire, then yes, odds are they could lose the lot, but these are not company records or similar and while they could have more than one external drive, and leave one at their son's home (and vice versa for the son) the need is not that high.

Another client who does have business related documents has been using DriveHQ.com which provides a backup application where you can schedule backups of various folders or have a 'hot backup' option which means that any modifications or new documents will be copied away to the remote server fairly soon after.

I don't remember how many hundred MB of files are protected in this way (a backup is made to CD from time to time, too) but even with relatively low speed connection there is no problem doing this. He does not use the remote backup for MP3s though.

I believe Bing (Hotmail / Live.co.uk) now offers around 10 GB of storage for free and 5 GB of that can be for music/ multimedia, but have not tried it myself.

There was a fairly recent thread (within last 6-8 weeks about online storage) and Carbonite was a service I remember (perhaps one I mentioned) because if someone has large quantities of data to backup, they have a flat fee with no limit, unlike several alternative firms.

Do search... the person asking is currently in Beijing so a 'advanced search' in geeky_stuff should find the thread either looking for Carbonite or China or Beijing

I can second the dropbox recommendation for important files. I use it (and have bought extra storage) across something like 5 computers. It's also super handy if you're working on a document say, at work, and then need access to it at home. Acts just like another folder on your computer plus there are phone apps meaning you can also access those files on the go. It's incredibly easy to use too.

Thank you .... will take sme time to research this. I am a teacher and the LEA has a service. Got quite excited and uploaded my first video clip of children's work ... and found that I had filled over half my allocation with 1% of my needs.

I use Dropbox as it's so easy. I used it to transfer files from my dads old windows 98 pc to his new one. Even he can use it!