I keep meaning to buy a second network hard drive to act as a back-up for my current one. I'm now wondering whether to sign-up for a cloud type back-up service instead.

Anyone using one; experiences, costs, issues etc...?

Cheers
Nick

I use dropbox which works well for automated off site storage, free for a couple of gigabytes.

however, it also implements deletion tracking, so, if you delete it from dropbox, ( via web interface, or any linked machine) it deletes it from all machines connected via that account,

there are some restore options available too, (more on the paid accounts)

but I recommend, still keep a local copy elsewhere on the hard drive

however, anything important, I alos mail myself a copy and leave it on the isp's ,mail server.

another vote for dropbox for file backup. The free version isn't big enough for whole pc backups though.

I have Google Drive installed, mainly because I seem to be collecting Android devices and it makes sense to go with the standard fit solution. However, I only use it for temporary storage and file transfer. It works quite well for what I'm using it for. But I think your first plan of getting a second drive will be cheaper,quicker and safer.

Cheaper is an obvious one, you only pay for the drive once. Quicker is a not so obvious one, if you work out how long it would take to run a backup you might change your mind. Don't forget most ADSL service upload at about a tenth of the speed of download. If I filled my 5Gb Google Drive, it would take me about an hour to download it, but it would have taken me most of a day to upload it. My maths isn't good enough to calculate how long it might take to back up a few hundred Gb!

As for safer, there have been a couple of extremely high profile online services that have folded, with no chance of rescuing documents. I consider it almost as bad as not having a backup, but you're also paying for the privilege.

[Edited on 1/8/12 by Slimy38]

Hmmmm, kind of confrming my suspicion that there's some way to go before it's a viable option.

I think plan A of a local back-up drive seems favourable so far.

I have been looking at this lately.. not took the plunge yet tho...


http://directbackup.net/

Yes, Dropbox here too, couldn't live without it now. Also great for file sharing.

I have iCloud turned on. No idea what it does, but the man in the Apple store said I should, so being the sheep that I am...

Think of online back up as a back up of your local back up. Do you trust them never to go bust taking everything with them? Or falling out with the FBI over something and getting all their servers seized?

I use both google and microsoft free storage options along with googlemail.

I run my own business and have a folder on my desktop that contains all my business files. I then run a programme to compare the contents of the business directory with the local copies of the google and microsoft cloud storage and sync them.

This means I've got two separate backups of my data on the cloud. Anything of a senstive nature is stored within an truecrypt encrypted file. I figure no matter what happens to my work laptop as long as I can get to a machine with office installed (accounts uses VB macros otherwise i'd look at other s/w) I can keep my business running.