Online Storage Sites...anyone have suggestions?

I've been thinking that I need to be better about backing up my computer. My parents harddrive crashed yesterday and I have a friend who's husband's computer got a virus today. This isn't a new thought by any means, but I'm a procrastinator. I've thought of using CDs to make actual back up copies of pictures. That is really all I have on this computer anyway. I think my desktop has crashed. This happened several months ago but I'm scared to try to boot it up. I figure that there is always the possibility of it working if I try. If I try and it doesn't work then I'll be sad. There is really only one picture on that other computer that I have to have. If it doesn't boot, I seriously think I'll have to send the harddrive somewhere to have them get it off. But that is a topic for another post...

This post is to ask if anyone has had any experiences using any of the online backup storage sites. I ran a goodsearch and clicked on one of them Adrive.com. It says for a personal user you can have 50gig of storage free. I'm sure I wouldn't use that much. I haven't really looked at other sites. I know I've heard advertisements on Sirius radio for some but can't remember any names at the moment. I wonder if Sirius has a section like XM does on their site for their commercial sponsors. I'll have to check.

If you don't use online storage, what do you do to backup your computer? I saw QVC had an external type harddrive backup system that held 250 gigs. It was around $130 maybe. It would automatically back up whenever you plugged it in to your computer. I think it was called Clickfree.

Suggestions? Opinions? Advice?

External HD is the way to go.

What if your computer 'breaks'? You can't get to the storage site til afterwards.

As with any company, I would want to know how long it had been in business and its reputation. One thing you can try is searching for user reviews, eg, "user reviews Adrive.com" or reverse the words.

With an external HD you can also take it to where a tech might be working on your computer and s/he can transfer the material straight to the new HD

Good luck!

LOL My tech is my brother in law who will now be living next door so he'd be working on my computer right in my house! But you do bring up some good points. The only thing is that all I really have to backup is pictures, nothing very important. I do wonder if this particular site lets you access it from any computer. I did do a search for user reviews for sites in general, but I haven't gotten to particular ones for adrive yet. I'm still doing some search. Thanks for the additional points.

Getting a external hard drive or some local form of storage, possibly a mirrored local file server, would be better than any form of a online storage site. If you expect to get one free, remember that these people are not obligated by law to insure that your data will remain safe and/or to create backups of your data. Basically that means that your data may not exist anymore if they have a server crash, and you cant do anything about it. If you are paying them, that is a different story. Still, with the money that you would pay for online storage, you could buy a external hard drive. The best option would to have a dedicated computer with two hard drives mirroring each other. In that case, if one of the hard drives dies or gets corrupted, the other will still have all your data unless the entire machiene gets destroyed. If you have any technical questions, you can ask me :).

I have had backups of other stuff on CD fail at the same time my cpu crashed and lost everything (thankfully before I started adding digital pix, but still lost all my documents, email addresses, favorite website links etc).

Since I have about 52 GB of photos on my computer now I do a fair back up system. Not perfect by any 'professional' standard, but I think I pretty much have my butt covered, short of my entire city disintegrating.

Anyways I have a minimum of FOUR backups of all my pix.

1) Main desktop built in hard drive (this is the main computer I do my photos on) Full back up.

2) External USB harddrive on top of the computer desk (I'm not positive on the exact model number but THIS one is very close to the one I got at Staples) Full back up.

3) Laptop (only a partial backup of just finished .jpeg images, not the original RAW files. On all the other backups I have both because I wouldn't want to reprocess that many pix again.)

4) DVD full back up (holds ALOT more than CD's ever thought of and takes up alot less space to store) I keep the DVD's at my mom's house in a fireproof box(offsite back up).

**as a side note, I NEVER erase my digital memory cards until I have at least two of the backups done and checked each for verification of transfer.

Should any one drive fail, I'd have 2 other back ups to retrieve the info from. Even (heaven forbid) should my whole house disinegrate (assuming the laptop is here at the time) I'd still have my DVD's from my mom's house.

Hope that helps you.

Personally while I know that alot of people use online offsite back ups, I tend to be very leary of the free ones, and even some paid ones. Since I'm not that familiar with how they work, what they might do with my info/pictures, or how secure the site is; I tend to steer clear. Most of the 'professionals' back up on paid sites with secure systems, but I doubt the avg. user just wanting to make sure they don't lose their info would need that kind of service.