Amazon S3, Carbonite, iCloud: any opinions?

[SwissJon]

I tried Live Drive some time ago, but was totally unimpressed.. Let us know how you get on with BackBlaze.. Looks interesting.

[photog1107]

Will do. One thing I'd like clarified with BackBlaze is exactly how the external drive functionality works. It sounds good from their website explanation, but I want to ensure I understand it fully, as that is a big part of why I want an online solution. If disaster strikes, I have several years' worth of original files on my external drives.

[prince]

I use Backblaze because of their "Unlimited" storage feature and external HDD. I still have not used external HDD feature but regular backup is good. Haven't had any problems so far. I also tried their restore and it worked fine. I had to move my backup primary computer from laptop to my new desktop and that worked fine too.

[smcilree]

I have been using CrashPlan since March and I am delighted with it, It offers a combination of all the other ideas that have been put forth here so far. It will backup data from internal or external drive. It will backup to an internal or external drive, another computer on your network or a friend's computer over the Internet. You are welcome to download the software and perform any or all of these types of backup for free.

If you wish to add backup to the CrashPlan servers in the cloud, you can choose plans for 10GB of data or Unlimited amount of data for $25 or $50 per year respectively. These plans cover backup of a single computer only, but you can also get a Family Plan which lets you backup up to 10 computers for $120 per year. You can get a free 30 day trial, and the software you download for the trial allows you to continue to make backups locally and to a friend's computer even if you decide against paying for a cloud backup plan.

The beauty of this is that once you complete an easy setup, you never again have to think about running backups. The CrashPlan software monitors the folders you have chosen to backup and runs whenever it detects that anything has been added or changed.

As with all cloud backup plans, the initial upload can take some time as will a complete restore should it become necessary. Therefore CrashPlan will send you an external drive that you can copy your data to and send back to initially seed your backup set in the cloud. The same scheme can be used to quickly make a complete restore of your data.

I am in no way connected with CrashPlan other than being a very happy customer. I do love this service, and I do urge you to check it out.

[photog1107]

Thanks to everyone who has responded on this thread. This is truly one of the most useful reasons I use DPS--everyone here has such great experiences to share and as fellow photographers, I know you are looking at the same challenges and issues that I have as well.

After looking at a lot of different options, I think the CrashPlan program looks like a good fit for me, and indeed it seems to have all the features I am looking for. BackBlaze was a close second.

Again, many thanks for the input!