online back-up?

<p>Currently I back up my photos on DVD's. I keep one by the computer, one in a fire-proof, water-proof box, and one at my daughter's house. I am considering an online back-up site like Mozy.com as a added layer of protection. What do you think of these sites?</p>

<p>Check out <a href="http://www.dropbox.com">dropbox.com</a>. It seems very nice with file synchronization and cross platform compatibility -- and the first 2GB is free.</p>

<p>Think about your upload speeds. Most people are lucky (very) to get sustained throughput of 1mb/sec going up. In reality, it's going to be slower than that for most people, most of the time. Backing up only a hundred high resolution RAW files (at, say, 15mb each) could easily take a couple of hours, depending on your connectivity and any throttling that your ISP might do if they see that happening all the time. If I were to go with online backups, it would take weeks and weeks for those files to make the trip. <br /><br />On the other hand, you can buy a 1 terrabyte disk drive for right around $100, and transfer those same hundred files in a matter of seconds ... and get them <em>back</em> in a matter of seconds. Buy three such drives, periodically sync and rotate them, and keep them in different locations. Far less fuss than burning optical media all the time. Burn write-once media occasionally when you're dealing with a folder full of "keepers," of course. But definitely do the math when it comes to online storage. It's the transfer times that'll kill you.</p>

<p>I don't think much of them. Upload/download times are pretty long with most internet connections. You can usually buy another hard drive for local backup cheaper than you can get online storage. A 1 TB drive is under $100. If you want off-site storage, put it in a bank vault or in a shed in your garden or in your car or in a friend's house.</p>

<p>If you only shoot a couple photos/week online might be OK. Otherwise 1GB or greater per week and upload times are ridiculous as well as reliability of vendor.</p>

<p>Multiple external high capacity drives are the best, simplest, fastest, most reliable and most logical way to go, indeed.</p>

<p>Mozy didn't work for me - I could never get a complete upload before some technical glitch hit. While it might work for someone with tens of gigabytes to backup, I have over a terabyte and that was just too much. Until upload speeds improve, I think we'll be stuck with sneakernet.</p>

<p>I use onlinestoragesolution.net for my third-level backup.<br>

They claim "unlimited" storage, but in practice it's 500 Gb. For $15/year it's not bad.<br>

FWIW, I get almost 10 Gb/day upload using my 1 Mb/s cable connection and rsync.</p>

<p>I'll go with a few others here. I don't, nor will I ever use off site backups.<br>

Short story?..I don't trust the technology and as already mentioned, the speed is a problem as well. </p>

<p>Even with large REID drive bays, I am still running into cataloging problems; but that is another story.<br>

DVD's are no longer a viable alternative for me either, with TIFF images averaging about 35MB/image.</p>

<p>Carbonite is an amazingly slick and useful utility.</p>

<p>Upload speeds are not all that relevant since it works in the background, or when you're asleep (you decide). Whether it's off-site as in <em>online</em> or off-site as in <em>somewhere</em> else, only you can decide how valuable your files (photo or otherwise) are to you.</p>

<p>I really don't have any good advice to give here, however I use a 3 hard drive back up system.<br>

one is backed up right on my pc<br>

2nd is a back up in house on a removable drive<br>

and the last was at my nieghbors house for my "off site" backups.<br>

Well I forget the name of the software I was using, but I had all three drives plugged in and had everything set and all I had to do was press a button and get all my drives sinked. I stepped away to grab a cup of coffee and when I returned I found my cat sitting on my keyboard. The result was desaterous. In the five minutes I was gone all three drives were wiped and I lost 10 years of images.<br>

In the end I was able to get one drive back after paying a company to retrieve the data $500. Get off site back up anyway you can and don't be shy on spending a bit of cash for good service.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone. You gave me a lot to think about.</p>