[joshwayy]

I know there are people more knowledgeable about pc's here than I, so I pose this question to you...which is the best online backup service?

I have an aging Dell which I just got clean from a nasty piece of malware and I can;t imagine losing the music, photos, etc... on my pc. I have looked at carbonite and mozy, but both seem to have some detractors and they clog system resources...however, the price is right at $50 a year. After an hour of research I googled "known issues with..." and I found that the more I read the more options were presented to me....confusion set in, so I turned to the base for help. :nooooo

[chris]

Why do you need it to be online? Just get an external drive and back up to it. You can pick-up 320Gb backup drives from FutureShop for about $100.

[joshwayy]

Fire, theft, automation...just to name a few.

[chris]

Fire, theft, automation...just to name a few.

If your data is that precious and you're that concerned about fire and theft back it up to more than one drive and keep it offsite. Swap the drives daily, weekly, or monthly depending on how often your data is updated. That's how I manage my data at home, and for my business.

Automation is the same with an external as a remote drive except the external is much faster as it uses a USB or FireWire connection instead of your internet connection. And you can write scripts or purchase software to manage your backups - in fact a number of the back-up drives include said software.

My hosting company (dreamhost.com) has a similar service to carbonite/mozy/etc and it works, but the drain on my internet connection dissuaded me.

[joshwayy]

I understand that backing up locally is faster, but hard drives fail...believe me I know, having lost my work drive a few years ago. I figured $50 a year would be a small price to pay for redundancy and peace of mind. I have 2 maxtor externals and the automated software they came with is so bad I could never get it to work. I also have mcafee set to do an automatic backup, but quite simply I don;t trust it. I want copies of my files, not a backup code that requires the software to get it back.

I know apples and vista machiens have a backup solution. I run XP. What backup software do you recommend?

[chris]

I understand that backing up locally is faster, but hard drives fail...believe me I know, having lost my work drive a few years ago. I figured $50 a year would be a small price to pay for redundancy and peace of mind. I have 2 maxtor externals and the automated software they came with is so bad I could never get it to work. I also have mcafee set to do an automatic backup, but quite simply I don;t trust it. I want copies of my files, not a backup code that requires the software to get it back.

I know apples and vista machiens have a backup solution. I run XP. What backup software do you recommend?

They do fail, but the chance of your main drive, back-up A, and back-up B drives all going down at once has to be pretty slim. I'm a Mac user and have SuperDuper and Time Machine for my back-up needs. No ideas for XP or Vista.

$50 is a low price to pay, just keep in mind that you are giving your data to someone else and although their current user agreement might say that they won't use it, if they get bought out those agreements often fall by the wayside... and you'd hate to have your data back-up on their system to find that they changed hands, and pricing and you had to pay to get your data back.

But to each his own... good luck!

[Tthip]

Here are some nice free online ones that give you up to 2 gigs of free storage:

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[sullivand]

Here's one I just came across. I can't access it from work, so I can't vouch for it, but plan to check it out tonight. It's from Microsoft, so take that for what it's worth:

http://skydrive.live.com/. Microsoft will give you 25GB of online storage just for signing up using your e-mail address.