Online Backups

I've already got my local backups running at home and am looking into an online backup solution. Does anybody have any experience with Carbonite? They look pretty good and very reasonably priced.

Those services, including Carbonite are very good & very reliable for those that are not storing a ton of data. The problem for photographers is that we usually have very large files and lots of them to backup. The upload speed (sending files to a server) of most Internet connections is about 10-20% of the speed of your downloads (getting files from a server). I had several gigabytes of info I wanted to synch up with Carbonite & it said it would take weeks to upload if doing so during down periods of my PC. During the free trial, I had it start on the upload & it truly was going to take weeks to get it all up there. If you are adding RAW files weekly to your back up needs, I'm not sure it can keep up with the backups in a timely fashion.

External hard drives have gotten so cheap that I have a tough time justifying any other method. I'd be interested to hear of other experiences with these services.

We're using "approximately" such a service, but it's a host site for private portfolios from our studio, which in turn places and fills orders directly from our lab. We've got DSL at the studio, but posting dozens of 35mb files daily keeps the connection "exercised" for many hours.

The host service is worth it for us due to the online sales directly from the site, but as a backup? Nah. We just finished an industrial shoot producing over 120gb of images in three days. DVDs are priceless, as are portable drives.

What happens to your data when the company goes out of business or is bought out by another company?

Cheers,
Mark

Wasn't there just something in the news yesterday about Microsoft or an affiliate experiencing a server failure for one of the PDA's? Lots of data lost.

I think Mark's examples and this will always keep us from relying on online storage. Your data is only as good as their own procedures, hardware and backups. We'd be keeping local backups too, so it begs the question of the need for online services.

I have not used these online services, but do have some photos posted to several sites. For the most part I use CD's. Now for certain sets of pics, I leave them on the memory card. Eventually I will do CD's of those pics too as you never know what can happen to those cards.
Elizabeth Chvilicek

I use carbonite and Love it! It relly saved me.

I have had 3 external hard drives fail me...Iomega and 2 Maxxtor. I was told that to retrieve the data would cost between $500.oo and $2000.oo! I just chalked it up to experience. Luckily I'd printed hard copies of most of the good photos and had some others on cds

Lightening "fried my computer a few months ago, and I had all my photos on it. When I got my new computer, I just logged ito carbonite, and it downloaded EVERYTHING I'd saved!

Granted, it took 5 days with so many files...but it was well worth the price. It'd only cost $57.oo or so, a year!

Lucy

Thanks! This is good feedback and gives me stuff to consider. I'm thinking of using an online service more for "off site" backups in case the house burns down or something. I suppose another option would be to get a few 32GB usb sticks and put them in a safety deposit box - that way there's no reliance on the Internet or companies going out of business.