Amazon S3 + Jungledisk. Sure it's more expensive than other backup solutions, but it's ROCK SOLID STABLE. - Sparky!

@Thparqui - you haven't seen my history of searching for a good backup service. I've already got an Amazon S3 account but can't afford to back up the 450GB worth of stuff I need to backup on it. I currently have about 150GB worth of stuff up there and it's all I can budget. I chose Mozy after a LOT of research and debate because it was the most affordable option even though I can't do stuff like access my files easily or share them with people like you can on S3. - Lindsay, thread killer.

How much is your data really worth to you? My data is my life - I'll gladly pay the $40 a month for that much on S3 to be 100% confident in it's stability. - Sparky!

It's worth a lot to me, but $5/mo seemed like a much more reasonable deal. And I had heard good things about Mozy. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I don't trust ANY provider for my data that is still in startup mode. They could go out of business at a moments notice, and don't have the 10+ year business track record Amazon has, nor do they have Amazon's deep coffers for weathering bad times for web services. - Sparky!

Why not just get a couple external drives if you are backing up that much? - Geoff Schultz

@Geoff Because 1) I want something offsite 2) I want something super redundant 3) I want something daily and 4) I want something automatic. I don't have time to be constantly switching out drives and I don't trust harddrives anyway. I don't have time to be ferrying a drive to a safe deposit box somewhere and I want access to my files wherever I happen to be (what If I'm traveling and have an issue... online backup can let me restore the important stuff wherever I am as long as there's an internet connection). - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Sean The cloud thing doesn't bother me... never has. I like the cloud. I don't trust MYSELF to keep physical backups. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I have 2.5Tb on my home server. At least 1Tb of that needs backing up. S3 et al are all too expensive :) - Roberto Bonini

@Thparqui - I agree with you about Amazon and that's why I have the 150GB there. That the "most important" stuff... The rest of it is important too... I am gambling that if Mozy died it wouldn't happen at the same time my harddrive would croak. But I'm not willing to pay Mozy if my data just poofs off their servers with no notice or explanation. $40/mo is a lot of money for the S3 alternative though. Sigh. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I dont mind the cloud either but uploading 250+ gigs is kind of impractical at 1mbps or whatever you got. Unless you are on like FiOS or something. - Geoff Schultz

@Geoff - no kidding... it took months... That's why I'm so upset that my data has vanished all the sudden. That's a large investment of my time and bandwidth. - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Roberto i rather backup my stuff myself. home server + external hard drives is how i would do it. - Alfredo

@Alfredo - what do you do if you have a house fire... what if you aren't home to grab your drives? Would you risk your life to grab them if you were? - Lindsay, thread killer.

no i would not risk my life to grab them. - Alfredo

Hehe, thats why I suggested multiple externals. One goes either in the safe or to a relatives house :) - Geoff Schultz

Yeah, but depending on how often you do that you'll still lose lots of stuff. And, again, I simply don't have time to chauffeur my harddrives around... Especially to my closest relatives... visits eat up too much time. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Windows Home Server is all Redundant Storage. Photos to keep are on Smugmug. But I need to find somthing for everything else. I'm not risking my life to grab the drives :) - Roberto Bonini

How much space do you get on Smugmug and would they let you store Photoshop files? I use Flickr but can't upload the Photoshop Files... and I'm afraid they're going to go down the tubes soon anyway. Also they don't let me upload the full resolution images and resize them so I don't think of them as a permanent storage solution for my images. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I'm with Linsay; while a local hard drive copy of your stuff is good to have, it is by no means a complete solution. You have to have offsite backup. Period. This is not debatable. And using cloud services makes this much more likely to happen than if you are trying to ferry around physical devices manually -- sooner or later the routine is going to break down. And even if you are good about the ritual, the time window between offsite swaps will often be measured in weeks rather than hours to days. That said, I have over 150GB up on S3 as well (using JungleDisk as the frontend to access it from multiple machines). It's not the cheapest route, but it's the route that gives me the most sense of security. And because it's in the cloud, I can easily access it while traveling (of which I do a lot of for work). - Christopher A. Wichura

@Christoper - Yay! Someone understands my concerns. :) - Lindsay, thread killer.

I currently use iDrive. I get 150GB for me, and 150GB for my wife for under $10 a month. Automatic. It worked fine so far. - Ian May

Oh I understand your concerns, I just have 900 gigs of video and can't even imagine uploading that hehe. - Geoff Schultz

Well, Geoff, look at how bandwidth has been increasing and storage fees dropping over time. It won't be all that long before storing terabytes in the cloud is no more difficult than storing a couple hundred gigabytes is today... - Christopher A. Wichura

Yeah, it sucks, Geoff... it used to be that the main barrier to producing lots of files was physical harddrive space. Now harddrives are cheap but online storage has not come down in price with them so now the barrier is the cost of actually backing up your data securely... I hate having to pick and choose what's important to me or not and back it up simply because it's too expensive. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Carbonite? I like them. The only thing I don't like about Carbonite is that it doesn't support USB devices yet. - Tamar Weinberg

@Tamar - guess it wouldn't work for me... my storage drives are all USB (my main computer is a laptop). Also I always had a bad vibe on Carbonite for some reason... - Lindsay, thread killer.

Yeah that was my next question. I wouldn't have a bad vibe about them, though. I had them on 2 computers for a year and then when I ported everything to USB drives, I let my subscription die. I'll be back on track with them once they announce USB device support. - Tamar Weinberg

Lindsay: Check out Backblaze - https://www.backblaze.com/ It was started by a bunch of ex Apple people and it is really evident in the clean UI and manner in which it just works. I love the service - been using for about 4 months. - Mike Bracco

@Lindsay: Not sure what type of stuff you are backing up (you did mention Photoshop files, though). For me, most of what I back up is photos. My approach is to back up the original RAW files and maybe a handful of Photoshop files that represented a large amount of post work for specific images. Otherwise, I figure if I have to re-do any post work in the future and am doing a restore, the tools and techniques to do the post work will have improved and I'll get better results re-posting the image. But the RAW file, the "digital negative", is that is really important and what I will always have backed up in the cloud. (Also keep in mind that I'm one that focuses on "getting it right" in-camera, to minimize post work anyway. With the advent of Aperture and Lightroom, I do very little in Photoshop anymore...) - Christopher A. Wichura

@Mike - I had evaluated Backblaze and almost chose it over Mozy. It was a pretty close race. I went with Mozy because I liked their UI better and I had been aware of them longer. But I might go with Backblaze if Mozy doesn't fix my issue. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Another vote for Jungledisk & Amazon S3. - Tom Hoover from iPhone

Smugmug will stick all your psds RAW files, etc on S3 for you. And tie them all together with the finished photos in the gallery. Kinda like a workflow thing. - Roberto Bonini

@Christoper - I have been lazy and not really gotten into RAW yet (I know, I should... but those take up even MORE room than my big JPEG originals). Most of the stuff I'm backing up is photos and Photoshop edits, yes, but some of it is downloads of licensed software that I may not have access to later, also I'm a developer so I have old code projects, Subversion repositories and other work related files including VMs that took a lot of time and effort to set up. I also have a lot of music and some video files as well. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Lindsay - SmugMug has the SmugVault and it allows for RAW and PSD storage & viewing (http://www.smugmug.com/help...). Not sure of costs... - JA Castillo

Oh...here's the costs link... http://www.smugmug.com/price... - JA Castillo

To be more specific, these days I use a Mac for photo editing. I import stuff into Aperture with library on the laptop's internal drive. My local backup is the Aperture vault on a Drobo. When done with a project, I then export the project to a separate directory structure on the Drobo where JungleDisk's backup is configured to pick things up and automatically store it on S3. So I am storing the RAW files plus Aperture metadata around them up on S3. And re-importing a project from JungleDisk seems to work fine. - Christopher A. Wichura

@JA Ahh, so it's basically the same as Amazon S3... I would probably rather just directly use my account then. - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Christoper - I actually use Super Flexible File Synchronizer instead of JungleDisk. I've used JungleDisk before when it was free but SFFS is a one time cost vs the subscription and it really is flexible (I can use it to schedule jobs to stuff other than S3). - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Lindsay - at least it gives you the opportunity to use SmugMug as a sharing site. I have no real back-up system other than external drives, so I am interested in what comes of this (I remember your initial thread about back-up choices; a doozy!). Just had a 320 GB drive tank w/ all my video files on it. A cloud solution looks likely for me as well. - JA Castillo

JungleDisk is a one time cost, too... The subscription model they introduced is not mandatory. JD was $20 one time for me and I use it from four different machines all to access my same S3 account. (Since they license it by S3 account, not by seat.) - Christopher A. Wichura

On-line could be more off-site safe, but small portable drives are cheaper & cheaper. Just saw 250 GB drives for $60 at Wal-Mart. I have three backup hard drives in Ohio & one 500 GB pocket drive which I travel with (I have older 20 GB & 120 GB pocket drives which I no longer use). Pricewatch http://pricewatch.com/browse... shows pocket 500 GB drives at $94 & $95 (shipping included) at two 4-star places. In 15 years, I've never had a bad purchase through PriceWatch (either business or personal), but I also don't purchase from places with only 1 or 2-star ratings. I travel a lot, and pocket hard drives are so key. You can leave one pocket hard drive in the trunk of your car, so it's not in the same place as your laptop. It's very easy to tuck 1-6 pocket drives in my computer case - they are so small. Mac Time Machine easily handles backups on multiple drives with no hassle. For smaller files, 32 GB SD cards are down to $88 (and I can use them in my camera), but 16 GB SDs at $33 are more price-competitive. 64 GB Flash-drives $150. http://pricewatch.com/flash_c.... I carry two 8 GB SDs, two 4 GB SDs, and two 2 GB SDs. I take my most active files, use StuffIt on my Mac to compress, and e-mail the 2 MB file to myself almost-daily (for redundancy). - Mitchell Tsai

Along the lines of backup redundancy, I've been hit by lightning while on a computer (which fried both the computer & the floppy disk in the computer so badly it was unformatable), and used to run backups for UCLA CS many years. Backup media often fail. An expert at Harvard (with zillions of Fortune 500 clients) recommends at least a four-copy solution (with one off-site). Why? Your computer may die while connected to backup #1 (frying both). Backup #2 can be zapped while munging the restore process, or perhaps it wasn't created correctly (or suffered drops or problems). Backup #3 should be safe under normal circumstances, so backup #4 is for extra safety. With on-line backup sites, if the stuff is not backed up on an external drive, I would vote for 3 different sites (owned by different companies). - Mitchell Tsai

At UCLA, when restoring from backup media...I'd say about 10% of the time, the tape backup media copy was damaged. So when restoring files from this week's backup, I might have to grab a few files from last weeks' backup, because this week's backup was damaged. I have had dropout problems when restoring from my backup hard drives, so I have lost a few pictures (which may or may not be on my other backup drives, haven't bothered to search through all my backups for the damaged files). - Mitchell Tsai

I'd say a hard drive tends to break down about once/5-10 years. When managing tons of hard drives, they are always breaking down. But with my own personal computers, I've had two die in 23 years. This doesn't count minor drops and lost data due to bad sectors. - Mitchell Tsai

Mozy slowed my computer down too much, so i canceled. - Mike Reynolds

Lindsay I got this reply to my Liked Tweet http://twitter.com/devinkn... from Davinknighton (davin@mozy.com) email him and he will sort your mozy issue for you. it seems they keep 30 days retention backup. so hopefully your file are still recoverable. Good luck - zsafwan 

Hey, I work for Mozy. Email me at nate@mozy.com with your Mozy account email and we'll get you taken care of. - Nate Kartchner

@Nate - just sent you an email. Thanks. - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Mitchell One nice thing about S3 is it is built around the assumption of cheap hardware that will fail. They mirror your data, and between east and west coast data centers, to boot. - Christopher A. Wichura

Used to use Mozy, switched to Carbonite-sooo much better. Don't even know it's there. - Bret Rowe

So far, for me, S3 + Jungledisk has been awesome. But as my backed up data grows, so does the price.... - Anthony Citrano

That's the problem with S3- Cost. It's the fairest pricing structure possible. But grows quickly. If they can charge by the terabyte at some point, it would go along way for individuals with large amounts of data to back up. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

I don't see it as a “problem”, per se, Roberto. As you say, it's fair. - Anthony Citrano

I left Mozy to run while I went on vacation and came back to a process that had apparently stalled less than a day in. TBH I think cloud backup is still very unreliable at this point, and not fast enough for me anyway. I roll my own backup solution via external & portable HDDs. - LANjackal

@Anthony - I would see S3s pricing structure to be more fair if it reflected the quickly dropping price of the physical drives... Prices per storage of a GB of storage on a physical drive has dropped a lot in the last couple of years, but S3s prices have not dropped proportionally (though I do acknowledge that they have dropped a tiny bit). - Lindsay, thread killer.

Mozy pulled that crap with me a few months ago and I ditched them for backblaze. - Brett Kelly from iPhone

Carbonite has worked well for me for over 3 years. - Tony C (Unrated)

I could never get Mozy to successfully back up 40gb + from my mac, let alone 200gb+ of media. Too slow, made my MPB crash, etc etc. The mac client also was too limited compared to what the windows client allowed in features. Finally had to cancel. I reason that a couple of extra drives +speed will make up for any additional cost incurred. - Cole Jolley

+1. Just not worth it IMO. Not to mention that at least I can resolve issues with my own my own hardware immediately instead of waiting for Mozy/some other remote provider to deliver a fix - LANjackal from IM

I have 246.4 GB on Mozy. I'm scared now. - Oliver Bouchard

No need to be, as long as you have it backed up locally somewhere. The ony reason I got into Mozy was as insurance in case my home got wiped out. I eventually resolved that concern my getting a 320GB portable WD HDD that I took to work with me every day - LANjackal from IM

Same here - I have everything backed up on a Drobo at home. It just took me around 1.5 years to upload al our photos to mozy (I only uploaded during the day, when I was at work). I don't want to do this again. - Oliver Bouchard from IM

250GB = 3.5 hours upload time for me, not months. I think the problem here is your isp. - Brandon

@Brandon What kind of connection do you have?! By Amazon's own admission, it would take "80 days to upload just 1TB of data over a T1 connection." According to their claims it would take over 12 days to upload your data over T1. - Brandon Titus

@Brandon: doing the math, 250GB/(3.5h * 3600 s/h) = 0.02GB/s = 20MBytes/s. In the unlikely event you actually have such a connection, it's not readily available to most people - LANjackal

Have any of you who have too much data to upload considered sending your drives to Amazon via their "Import/Export" program? It sounds like a cool thing although it's fairly pricey ($80 fee per drive and $2.50 per hour of transfer time). http://aws.typepad.com/aws... - Brandon Titus

Sounds like the ideal solution, but that's sickeningly expensive - LANjackal from IM

Yeah, it's clearly not priced for any kind of small data transfer like this but if someone had some really important data I think it could definitely be valuable. Of course, it's one time backup but it would get you to a point where all future files would be backed up directly. (Still doesn't help the cost of S3). - Brandon Titus

I don't understand why people are compelled to go with S3 or Rackspace. I mean, the idea is great but when you have 250GB, that's a LOT of money and you're paying monthly. Mozy/Carbonite/similar services aren't like that. - Tamar Weinberg

I've been using SugarSync for a while now.. fortunately (or unfortunately) I haven't had to test restoring files... if that time comes, I'll be sure to let everyone know how it went. I love their service and features, though. I thought their pricing was slightly higher than I wanted, so right now I am on the freebie version. Eventually, though - when they have an Android client and allow backing up from external drives, I will purchase it. I'd say I'd be a bit shocked if Mozy isn't able to recover your data though. - Tim Hoeck

Check out crashplan for p2p backup. Buy a hard drive or cheap Linux box and stash it at a friends house. You can prime it locally first to bootstrap yourself. Cost: $0. - Joe Beda () from iPhone

Get in touch with @mozy on Twitter. Worked when I had mozy problems - Phill Price from iPhone

Phill, contact with Mozy already happened here on FriendFeed. See earlier comments in this thread. - Micah

@LANjackal: I do have such a connection, it is widely available now, you just have to have your isp drop fiber at your location. The price has gone down significantly too. 40Mb/s Down // 20Mb/s Up = $200-$500 a month depending on where you live. - Brandon

Nate/Lindsay, got an update for us? Is it OK now? :) - AJ Batac

whoa. - Caroline

@Brandon: OK cool, but that's just not doable for most people. I love my internet but I don't have $6K/year to drop on it - LANjackal from IM

Any update Lindsey? I will say I am impressed that mozy found you on here to help. I have mozy too and am pleased so far. It did take me 14 days to back up all my stuff but I like it so far. - Amani

wow that's not good CS - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I was just about to buy Mozy but will now give an extra thought - Martin Liechti from fftogo

LOL @ Brandon - If I had $200-$500 to drop on my home internet connection none of this would be an issue and I'd be using S3 instead. HAHAHA. Wish I could afford $6K a year just for the convenience of fast internet. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I heard from Nate that he's looking into it and I heard back from the CS dept but it's still up in the air. The CS rep said that the files are still there but it would "take a while for the reassociation to happen". As far as I can tell Mozy is just trying to upload everything again and nothing is going any faster than it did the first time. I replied to the CS rep and asked him how I will be able to tell that I'm not uploading the 450GB of stuff that I already had close to 300GB uploaded of and asked how to prevent Mozy from "losing" my data whenever I have to unplug that external drive but haven't heard back. I would really like a reply as this is a waste of time and strain on my computer to upload this stuff again AND all the "new" stuff I wanted to upload is not getting backed up so that leaves it unprotected for that much longer. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Thparqi - startup? Go out of business? It's EMC.... I think they're safe..... - Jeff (the マクダジ of FF) from iPhone

Okay, I have 300 gigs of unbackuped photos, and I'M SHIT SCARED. NOT A SINGLE BACUP - ONE DRIVE GOES KAPUT, AND I'M DEAD! - Yuvi

Mozy being EMC was one of the points that convinced me to use them. At least they should have access to good storage technology. But if they cannot pull of a reliable software then this doesn't help at all. - Oliver Bouchard from IM

With respect to Jungle Disk comments - I would suggest CrashPlan instead: 1)It's less expensive or even free. 2)It allows local backup, offsite to friends, and to their cloud. 3)When using their cloud, they automatically verify your data to insure it's in healthy order. Amazon just lets it rest. 4)You're not charged for bandwidth in or out.. and 5)if you needed it all back asap, they'd ship you a USB drive. - Matthew Dornquast

Lindsay - let us know the outcome. I'm sure it'll work out. I personally am going to stick w/ Mozy (assuming you have a good outcome:)) as I still trust that EMC is better than some fly by night place that could go out of business w/ my data overnight... - Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)

@Lindsay - I checked into Backblaze as an alternative to Mozy. You mentioned backing up virtual machines to Mozy, so I'm assuming that Mozy doesn't have a file size limit. Backblaze has a per file limiit of 4GB, so it doesn't appear that it will backup my virtual machines. - Tom Hoover

CrashPlan has no file size limits or limits to the # of versions or period of time data is retained. - Matthew Dornquast

CrashPlan seems pretty awesome so far. - Tamar Weinberg

Awesome! Let us know if there is anything you don't like. - Matthew Dornquast from email

Lindsay, I would love an update on what happens. We just rolled out 1-2 GB per associate that is field assigned, and this makes me very nervous of our decision. - ChangeForge | Ken Stewart

Update @Ken and all - I had a couple more conversations with the Mozy folks and they assured me that my data was still there and would take time to "reassociate" now that the drive is plugged in again. I didn't really believe that because it said that it was trying to back up my entire drive again on the local client and didn't show much progress for days but checking this morning and there are 358GB listed on my quota on the website so it seems that it is working again after all. The CS rep suggested that if I have to disconnect the drive again to disable the backups so that it will not mark those files as deleted. That's a doable workaround but I really think they should fix their UI so you can just suspend backing a particular drive and not have to disable the backups for ALL your drives when you're not able to connect to one of them... but I suppose that for $5/mo to backup all that data I can't complain that much and I'm glad that all that time and bandwidth has not been wasted after all. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Thanks for the update :) - AJ Batac

Given they only keep deleted files for 30 days - does that mean you have to keep that drive attached all the time or the backup will be erased? CrashPlan never wipes data and if the drive is removed, it just waits for it to come back.. it does not assume files have been removed. - Matthew Dornquast

@Matthew - it would cost me close to $40/mo to put my data on CrashPlan's hosted site. I will live with the 30 day limit to save close to $420/yr. And EMC is bigger than CrashPlan so less likely (yes, I acknowledge there is still risk) to go away suddenly. I don't know anyone with a fast enough internet connection to keep USB drives at their house, plus it's a lot to ask for them to allow access for me to that drive 24x7 (not to mention slowing down their CPUs while its backing up). And those drives would be just as susceptible to failure or fire as they would be if I had them at my place. Mozy (or even Amazon if I've got to pay $0.10/GB) is a better solution for me. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Why does everyone keep saying Mozy is likely to stay around because it's EMC? EMC loses ground to HP and IBM in the storage arena every quarter. They were once the end-all-be-all in online storage, however they are rapidly becoming a bit player in a commodity space. - Sparky!

Because they're more well known than the OTHER bit players? Perception is everything. Do IBM and HP offer similar services for backup? I'm not aware of them if they do. - Lindsay, thread killer.

Amazon is the only SAAS storage solution that's backed by a large company with other interests. Sure it's expensive, but from a business perspective it's the only player on the market right now that I've got any faith in being around comes 3 years from now. Sure others will survive, but who knows which ones. - Sparky!

And no - IBM and HP offer enterprise storage solutions, but that's what EMC's bread and butter is, and their butter is getting really thing thanks to the IBM and HP offerings. Mozy is their tiny little side project that they *WILL* drop long before their enterprise stuff if the going gets tough. - Sparky!

If that time comes then I will have to bite the bullet and finish uploading the rest of my stuff on S3... But in the mean time I can save a few bucks. I trust Mozy's infrastructure more than players I'm less familiar with. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I'm too paranoid about my data to trust that. What happens if Mozy goes out of business and then a hard drive fails while I'm still uploading to S3? I want a single backup solution for the long term and my data is who I am - it's worth my life to me. - Sparky!

Why would you choose someone that has failed thousands? Google "Mozy Sucks" - there are so many people upset over not being able to restore data, having their deleted data wiped after only 30 days. Amazon has been down for hours at a time. Why not build your own cloud? Buy a 1TB drive, backup to it, move drive to the office/friends house and you've got automatic offsite backup for free with CrashPlan. So what if they go out of business? You still have your backups safely offsite. But seriously, if you're going to trust someone in the cloud, at least trust someone that doesn't have so many negative stories online. - Matthew Dornquast

Did you read my comment above about why I'm not using CrashPlan Matthew? I don't have a bunch of people I can trust to put drives in locations I can get to if my drive dies... plus unless I have 4 or more drives redundantly backing up I don't really feel like I'm covered if it's up to me to provide the hardware and that will cost a lot more than a year's subscription even with Amazon. And those drives are just as susceptible to the problems I'd have if I just backup to drives at home and it would be inconvenient for the people I'm asking to host the drives for me. There's no perfect solution but CrashPlan is not a good fit for me. I'd rather use Amazon if I had to pay more. - Lindsay, thread killer.

re>pricing. I agree - CrashPlan is more. But only if you use them as a destination. Create your own cloud and have backup offsite for $0/month. I have over 20 people backing up to my house.. and each of them offered me space at theirs. Since the software is free and doesn't require CrashPlan.com to be in business when I need to restore, its' safer. Better still - ever try and download 500GB over the net? Ever tried to restore that much from Mozy? I seriously doubt it will work (google "mozy restore problem" to see why) If you care about your data, and plan to leverage free cheap online "unlimited" providers, at least double up and choose two. Your odds are much better. :) - Matthew Dornquast

Crashplan is a great concept, however since most people I know have limited internet connections the upload/download of backups would be very throttled. Better to have one end of the equation be in an enterprise datacenter with (in the view of a home internet connection) has limitless bandwidth and capacity. - Sparky!

re>comment - yes sorry - I did miss it. I'm not trying to sell you on CrashPlan so much as ween you off Mozy. - Matthew Dornquast

I don't have that kind of network and even if I did it's not free as you imply... each drive I would have to buy to provide to the people who'd do that backup costs money too. No one is just going to let me use 400GB+ of space on their own drives for my backup. - Lindsay, thread killer.

@sparky you can backup to the drive, then move drive offsite. Only new "bytes" are sent to destination, so the only bandwidth that's used is the new data you generate.. which is typically really slow over a month. - Matthew Dornquast

Matthew - that gets REALLY expensive when you have to buy drives in multiple locations... - Sparky!

@sparky why multiple drives? a 1 TB drive can hold about 1.5 TB of backup data after compression and data de-duplication. The drive costs $80. Do you have more than 1.5TB of backup data to backup? - Matthew Dornquast

Redundancy is important Matthew... one backup drive isn't much protection. - Lindsay, thread killer.

You guys are scaring me. I've got all my photos in "ONE" poorly ventilated, 24x7 Dektop PC :| - Yuvi from IM

Ok - lets take your example of 250GB. We'll buy 2x640GB drives for a total of $120. They'll easily hold 1TB of data each. Total cost for completely redundant backup locally and offsite is $40/year for 3 years. Benefits: 20x faster restore when you need it, complete offsite protection, greater security. Because CrashPlan doesn't trust hardware to actually be working, you'll be notified if the drives fail, drop a block, etc automatically. - Matthew Dornquast

@Yuvi - dude, at the very least get an external drive so when that computer dies you can plug your data in another box! - Lindsay, thread killer.

@Matthew, I don't consider redundant any fewer than 4 drives, but again, I don't have 4 people local to me that I trust to actually keep their computers open to my backups 24x7. I can't put it at my mom's or my in-laws because they only connect to the internet when they absolutely have to (they're part of the generation that is convinced that people will hack into their computers if they leave them connected to the internet when they're not using them). I don't have other family or friends that I'd want to impose on... so it's just not an option for me... and again, it's susceptible to the same problems as keeping a backup myself... drives fail and fires happen. - Lindsay, thread killer.

I can't afford an external drive even :| I'm so broke - all I have is 'round 2$ with me. - Yuvi from IM

@Lindsay, where do you get the figure of 4 drives? Does Mozy state that they have four copies of your data? Since we're talking about your backup, not your main data repository, so as long as the backup doesn't fail at *exactly* the same time as your main repository does, then you have redundancy. - John Röthlisberger

I'm a fan of CrashPlan (no association to the company) and I back up my laptop to my home server (copy #1) and to the cloud (copy #2) -- so counting the actual data on my laptop, I have 3 copies of everything. I'm covered in case of a fire (the cloud backup), and in case of disk failure on my laptop, I will restore from my local backup at high speed. - John Röthlisberger

The thread that won't die.. Hi Lindsay - I just wanted to say we've responded to your observations on cost. Today we launched unlimited backup for ALL of your computers for as low as $5/Month. Of course, we're not as big as Mozy, but then again, we've been around longer and have been profitable since 2001. Cheers! - Matthew Dornquast