Offsite computer backup

Leo

Well-known member
I need some good offsite computer backup suggestions. Lots of options out there, shying away from iCloud because Apple already has a little too much of a lock on me already (Mac, iPhone). Free is nice but willing to pay.

BTW, just a reminder: back up your computer regularly. Had my laptop stolen last week, last backup (to an external hard drive) was mid-February, so had a lot saved but sucked having to recreate the past 2-3 weeks of client work. Luckily I email most stuff to clients, so could download the attachments from my gmail. Lost a bunch of music but managed to retrieve some from the backup hard drive and some from my iPhone (using Senuti).
 

sufi

lala
(i know it's not what exactly you're after, Leo, but...
i've been meaning to sign up dissensus for this: https://www.codeguard.com since i swapped the host over last year, & following a good recommendation, so i just signed up for the 14 day trial,
Not sure if anyone noticed there was no call for dissensus contributions in 2013 as i moved us to cheaper hosting, anyone want to contribute for the $60/year for this backup service, my paypal is still sufi@metronet.co.uk!)
as you were...
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
I would only go for one of the two big ones for external file backups (proper backups with incremental, system images are a different matter)
- Google or Microsoft (or possibly Amazon if they were to offer this for individuals), Google's $2/month for 100GB extra seems one of the best offers out there.

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/onedriv...which-cloud-storage-service-is-right-for-you/

The reason I would be reluctant to go elsewhere is that these giants have been around for a while and that they will be around for a while and they use a world class infrastructure - ie you are unlikely to suffer data loss (this in light of the Western Digital Mydrive ramshackle -
http://www.zdnet.com/western-digital-users-are-fed-up-with-my-cloud-failures-7000028154/)

Use a local TrueCrypt file/volume to make sure any sensitive documents are stored encrypted before backing them up in the cloud.

You'll have to use something like SyncToy (if on Windows) or arSync (Mac) to sync your documents from your local drive to
your Skydrive/Google Drive (locally mounted).

If a big chunk of your data are photos, then set up a Flickr account for backups, a massive 1TB of free storage.

If you are a paranoid (and you should be these days), then simply get a small external hard drive, back up to it using normal Windows Backup/Mac Timemachine and store the disk somewhere external to where you live (at work, at a friend's).
 
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sufi

lala
... or you could set up an http://owncloud.org/ - kind of like dropbox or google docs, but owned (set up and run) by you.

... or get a networked hard drive set up at a friend's <- this was recommended by a mate who has a harddrive set up so it's available directly without having to faff about with usb to a pc, i guess you could set up a reciprocal deal to host s'one else's backups while they host yours!
 
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