Anyone use an online backup site?

[OldRod]

My wife and I are looking to go paperless as much as possible at home, so we've been scanning in important documents and getting our bills/banking to be all electronic. We are looking for an online backup site to use to back up our documents/photos. Has anyone used one (like Carbonite, or another) that they would recommend?

[PaxBritannia]

I've looked into them before. However, I haven't used them.

The one "backup site" I have used is Dropbox, though their more of a file syncing service. Also note that their max plan is at 100Gb.

Most of those sites should be OK in terms of reliability: most of them resell Amazon's 3S service. The things you want to look for are their API and customer support (as well as pricing, of course).

However, setting up your own account at Amazon 3S should be viable if you have the tech knowledge to do it. The cost is also unbeatable.

pax.

[OldRod]

I use Dropbox's free account for keeping files synced between work and home. It works great.

But for the 100GB account it gets pricey. Not familiar with Amazon's service - is it usable by anyone?

[hallsofvallhalla]

i have never used one but have been thinking about one for pictures and stuff.

Currently what i am doing is i bought a IDE to USB connector and I took all my old hard drives(5gb-50gb) and use them liek a jump drove. Load all my stuff then put them in a box in the closet. Not the safest way but works for now

[OldRod]

Been doing some research... looks like SugarSync gets pretty good reviews from what I can see. I may check them out.

[PaxBritannia]

Sugarsync's storage is also built upon Amazon's S3 for storage. The only feature of Sugarsync that may annoy some non-tech users are their tree diagrams for folder management. It is in essence a glorified FTP agent that syncs as well. Since backup's are your priority, you might or might not want it to do this. It depends on what type of backups you are doing.

If it's old files you just want to keep but not have to worry about, I would just FTP it to a server somewhere else (e.g. Amazon S3) and RAID it at your house.

Reliabilty, pricing, etc. is all good for Amazon S3: there is just the absence of an interface to upload files and manage it. There may be some open source interfaces which you could make work with S3, that would be the obvious choice.

pax.

[OldRod]

I just want something simple and brainless to use - I want to point it to a folder on my hard drive and say "keep it backed up, along with any subfolders". My wife needs to be able to use this, so it needs to be simple

[PaxBritannia]

Does it have to be backed up online, or can it be local?

If you want a care-free solution then a synchronisation service would be the best way to go. I haven't really looked into it, but there may be some delta updating ftp programs out there which would work seamlessly with Amazon S3 or any regular host.

pax.

[OldRod]

Well, we wanted online just for safety. I have 2 external hard drives, but they are in the same house as the computer and if a fire/tornado/whatever hits, they are all gone

[PaxBritannia]

Very true... There's recently been several floods near where I live. Fortunately I live on a hill. Though there were a lot of people affected.

Anyone else have any ideas?

pax.