Currently copying my dying 1TB drive to my brand spanking new 2TB drive... then have to see how the chuff i'm going to recover my other dead 1TB drive without paying a kings ransom. Will definitely do some form of online backup after this.

Jungle Disk: http://www.jungledisk.com/

It's available on all major OS and local encryption is available. Jungle Disk is based on Amazon S3 and Rackspace.

Martin

I've been using Mozy for the last month or so and have to say that it's pretty usable.

I used a Swisscom solution at the time I worked there. Their pricing is "Swiss" and for me as a consumer not acceptable. Another local one would be: http://www.swissvault.ch/ Same high pricing issues...

However:
- If you are serious about back-ups, a NAS is not enough, no matter of the RAID level you use: If your house is on fire, the data is gone.
- I would not mix up back-up with "drop-box" and the like: One solution is to easily carry files from computer to computer, the other one is to store large amounts of data safely. You only touch a back-up when the original file is broken (or you dropped your laptop and want to easily get all files on a new one...)
- I must admit that I really should start to use it as well, but some of the companies recommended here look a little obscure to me. I would only back-up important things as scans of important documents. Exactly the stuff I do not want in the hands of the wrong guys, so I would be willing to pay a bit more a month if it is a rather large and trustworthy company operating it.

Suggestions?

I went the easy route and set up a second NAS using remote replication. Simples.

And the second NAS is deep under Paradeplatz?

Anyway: Good idea.

Backup is great, just don't forget about trying to restore your data from time to time. Too many backups fail when a restore is needed.

Martin

that's a nice ideal world - of course only issue is - what speed is your uplink and the downlink at the other end?

I have 1MBit upload and I guess in most cases folks have 10-20Mbit download

Problem is I can easily add a gig of data after a photo shoot and that would take forever.... hence my 1TB drive via USB then taken offsite idea

honestly i know the risks and yet i'm still not covered 100% to my satisfaction - i can see a NAS purchase in my near future

I used to recommend Crashplan. But not any longer -- http://try-dot-ch.blogspot.com/2010/03/crashplan.html

True, but 0.15 per month (even if you have 1kb of data lying there) and then the transfer 'in' and 'out' meaning downloading from and uploading to S3 would also cost you! don't know if this has changed since I last used it.

Personally, I wouldn't put my personal data online into someone else's hands, especially so if its an unknown or small company... they can stop their service anytime... so suppose you are on holiday and they send you an email telling you to download all your data within a few days or everything will get deleted.... (which happened with Yahoo Briefcase), then well say bye bye to all your data.

But then that's just my opinion.

It seems they will soon make Dropbox even better adding Selective sync.
http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=453

I find also all this online backup services not very reliable. They can disappear at any moment, and you don't know under which legislation your data are stored. Not to mention the privacy issue. So far my solution has been to have a NAS (Qnap is the brand) with disk redundancy (raid 1). I make every 3-4 months a copy on another disk that I store outside my house.

Back in Blighty, ectually!
I manage the box remotely, the only thing my friend in Engyland has to do is hot-swap a new drive if one fails.

I use Cablecom's 20Mbps/2Mbps and similar at the other end.

Yes, it may take a while to sync after a large volume of data, but the point is that it actually does it - continuously, securely, without intervention, without effort and (probably most importantly) without me having to remember.
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