Is there a better online backup than Carbonite?

[BirdOPrey5]

Why not buy a physical hard drive to store off site?

$60 for a TB and it's yours forever.......

1) Where is off-site? Am I going to ask a family member to hold onto a drive? Do i trust them to keep it safe, away from magnets, dry, etc... Do I trust they will find it when I need it? What if I need it at 3AM?

2) Physical hard drives are NOT forever. If I let a drive sit 2 years I have about as much confidence in it starting as a car I left sitting for 2 years.

An online backup is ten times safer than a physical drive.

I bit the bullet with iDrive today and paid for a subscription. It's uploading much faster than Carbonite. I've left carbonite uploading anyway, we'll see which finishes first.

 

[Yellowdog]

4.99 a month for websites AND sever storage with 25 secure folders

250 terabyte max data sorage

1 and 1 internet

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Well there is 1 day left on my Carbonite trial. It has been nearly constantly uploading for 14 days and only managed 83.2 GB of about 94 GB of data, 89% at the moment... Pretty pitiful. Can't see ever using carbonite seriously. And this doesn't include my MP3s.

iDrive is reporting about 4 hours to go to complete a backup that includes everything of value, about 140 GB... And it started much later then carbonite did. Still iDrive must use some form of throttling- when I had rebooted my laptop last time it was going super fast, did 1 gig in about 10 minutes... But has since slowed down significantly.

Ran this test with both iDrive and cabnonite uploads going on in the background.

 

[CharlieP]

I agree Carbonite is slow- I think my initial upload was 5-6 weeks, but like you I wanted off-site and already had on-site external. It is now something I don't even notice or think about. I was tired of worrying about losing family photos in a catastrophe.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Are you using any special software for local backups?

I'm using Microsoft Sync Powertoy but I'd like something I cold set and forget like carbonite for local backups.

 

[Yellowdog]

I just queued up a 2.5GB ISO image to upload via FTP to my host and it was accepting it just fine. I wish it was faster though, usually tops out around 300-500 KB/s

I upload 4 -8 gig a time at 750-1000k upstream

 

[CharlieP]

Are you using any special software for local backups?

I'm using Microsoft Sync Powertoy but I'd like something I cold set and forget like carbonite for local backups.

I just use Syncback free version and schedule it to run in the evenings. It won't do locked files like an Outlook pst with it open, but I'm not too worried.

 

[wct097]

Giving Carbonite's free trial a shot now.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

I just use Syncback free version and schedule it to run in the evenings. It won't do locked files like an Outlook pst with it open, but I'm not too worried.

 

[wct097]

So Carbonite has been running all night and I just checked it. It's Idle with 1.57gb backed up and 0 bytes awaiting backup. It shows folders as green (backed up) while their contents are yellow (awaiting backup), and just about everything shows as scheduled to be backed up and not actually backed up.

What gives?

 

[BirdOPrey5]

I used advanced scheduling to set a backup window of 23hours and 55 minutes so it would constantly backup.

Also, mp3's won't backup on a free trial.

 

[Ralph]

I'm going through this right now... Have any of you found a good solution?

Some friends suggested Mozy and Backblaze to me. They both seem to be similar in features, and price is $50/yr for Backblaze, vs $72/yr for Mozy. Are either one of these affiliates?

 

[BirdOPrey5]

I've been happy with iDrive... I see they are offering an unlimited plan now too... Once you have the bulk of your data uploaded it's not bad keeping it synced.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

My iDrive is at 99% of capacity now... I will have to buy an upgrade if I want to expand capacity...

Mr. Wylie emailed me last night about another place- Easiest Online Backup Service - Backblaze

"Unlimited" storage for $5/mo per computer... less if paid yearly.

He claims great upload speeds and the website says no needing to pick out file types...

It sounds like a great solution... Not sure if I will try it before I get a new laptop though.

 

[Ralph]

I am using Backblaze. Currently I have 80GB backed up with them. It took about 30 days to initially upload. You can manage the upload speed to not eat up all your bandwidth. So far, so good - I think I'm on month 4.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

What's your internet bandwidth? 30 days is terrible.

 

[wct097]

Not sure how long it took it to finish backing up, but I've got 75gb on Carbonite now and have been pretty happy with the service.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Any new info on these? My iDrive expires the 28th of this month and I don't want to renew- they had a stupid policy where I can't upgrade their client software without canceling my account and starting a new one. If I'm going to re-upload everything from scratch I'm going to find someone who won't waste my time like this in the future.

 

[Justin]

Backblaze?

 

[BirdOPrey5]

yeah, I'v downloaded the trial of BackBlaze for now, looking good, $5 / mo is fair... Just checking if anything else anyone recommends.