online backup service?

Do any of you use an online backup service?

What are your experiences?

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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16 Comments

  1. I have used Carbonite for over a year, and it has been wonderful!!!!! My 2 yr old Dell keeps crashing, and since customer service is less than what it should be, Carbonite has been wonderful!!!! A must for any PC and there is now a MAC version. Worth the 50.oo bucks a year-

    Father, if you use this, my husband and I will pay for your service for three years.

  2. Thomas Grant says:

    Father I use Carbonite.com. Only $5 per month unlimited backup. Great service runs in the background. It takes a few hours the first time it backs everything up but after that it runs in the background and downloads only things that have changed. You don’t really have to do anything after that. As we say in the Army “fire and forget”

  3. don Jeffry says:

    I have Carbonite but since I have a Mac… I haven’t had to use it. I have Carbonite in case of an earthquake or Hell freezing over and that I might have a side effect from that never knowing where the limits are. don Jeffry

  4. MargaretMN says:

    We used Mozy for awhile. Similar price to Carbonite and we had it set to back up every night to avoid conflicts or slowdowns. We paid about $10 to back up two computers. Never had any problems, we just decided to do our backup on a home server and since we aren’t in a floodplain or earthquake zone, we’d chance it and save the money.

  5. dad29 says:

    Umnnnhhhh…in case you’re just a little leery of having all your “stuff” out there where somebody can (and maybe will) find it, what about buying another C-drive, installing it w/Windows, and calling it the E-drive, backing up all your stuff to that?

  6. Will says:

    Jungledisk uses Amazon.com’s S3 storage service, which is dirt cheap, well distributed, and highly reliable. I’m quite fond of it.

  7. Will says:

    Dad29, that doesn’t help if your house burns down. At least back up to a USB or firewire drive and store it with a trusted family member or friend, or put it in the safe deposit box at your bank.
    With strong encryption, I don’t particularly worry about my off-site storage.

  8. Landon says:

    I like dropbox quite a bit. It is certainly not meant to be a complete backup solution, but its helpful for stuff like papers.

  9. Helene says:

    I’ve used Mozy for about a year now and am thoroughly happy with it. I did have one instance where I had to get some files back and it was amazingly easy to do.

  10. Goptom says:

    I use JungleDisk… it works really well… the first backup takes a while but that is with any online backup… It is really cheap only $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used… and it is storied by Amazon so it is very safe

  11. D T says:

    I have used Carbonite and Mozy and am satisfied with both. However, Carbonite encrypts data whereas Mozy doesn’t, so I opted for Carbonite on my main computer. However, if you’re computer is older and slower, Carbonite may slow it down a bit. Mozy also has much more advanced options than Carbonite.

    I believe both services offer a free trial. If you decide to get Carbonite, use the offer code “rush” to get, I believe, two free months.

  12. Kerry says:

    Here are the top 25 online backup companies for March 2009:
    http://www.backupreview.info/2009/03/01/top-25-for-march-2009/

  13. Antonia says:

    I use Mozy. Free up to 2GB. Great software & easy to restore as well. I use it less as a backup than a multiple-computer, single-storage kind of solution. Gmail Drive is another ad-hoc backup solution possibility.

    With regards to online backup in general, it is generally dicey and I can tell you many horror stories (look up “Streamload”)– but then again Father, you seem to need good news more than bad.. so I’ll spare you & just say that if it is possible, do not rely too much on them :) If you must, back up your data to multiple online storage.

    (If you must read the bad news, here’s a techcrunch article that reviews several leading online backup solutions. All but 2 or 3 have closed down — and here’s the catch, losing their customers’ data.)
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/31/the-online-storage-gang/

  14. John Enright says:

    I don’t use an online backup service, since I have many documents which contain confidential information about clients. Instead, I have a dedicated machine which archives all of my other machines.

  15. Nancy Reyes says:

    Backup? What backup?With frequent brownouts, we are always blowing our hard drive here in the rural Philippines.

    I just backup everything important on hard disks.
    As for crashes, I messed up my Dell microsoft Reboot and have used Ubuntu ever since.
    All the software is free, and I don’t have to figure out where I put my passwords (or call the company and be placed on hold for a couple hours at overseas rates).
    Of course, I just use the computer for email and blogs…not gaming…

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