Need online backup

[Raymond_Nick]

Hi all

I am a budding photographer, and I have Windows Vista Home Basic on my pc. What would be the best way for me to secure my files, and make sure I don’t lose everything if my computer crashes? I have about 50 gb of data, and few video clippings also. My data mainly consists of my precious photographs that I clicked all throughout.
I was thinking about online backup. Will that be reliable? Please suggest few good options.

Thanks in advance.

[djr33]

Online backup (sorta the new big fancy thing on the internet) is not really designed for that much data. It works well for people who have lots of important text documents, and maybe the occasional photo, but even if you get an unlimited data plan (50gb? seems expensive), you will still have to wait for 50gb to upload and update every time you change things. If the software is smart enough and you don't change the old photos very much then it won't be constantly uploading them again, but it still seems awkward.

External hard drives are getting cheaper and cheaper, so I suggest getting one and just copying your files to it. If you need something more automated (as you plan to change things a lot) then many now come with automated backup software. I just bought a 1tb "HP Simplesaver" drive that automatically backs up all your files. I actually disabled it because that wasn't my purpose in buying the drive, but it's there if you do want it.

The only problem with that is that if your house burns down, gets flooded, your electronics are stolen, or any other major problem like that, both the hard drive and the computer may be gone so that isn't much of a backup. So in that case if you're worried about it an online solution may work, or, more likely just do periodic backups and give a copy to a friend or leave it at the office, etc.


I'd say go ahead with the online backup except that 50gb is a huge amount of data for even a broadband connection. Depending on your setup that might take 50 days to upload, or maybe much longer if the connection/server are particularly slow. It won't take less than a week, regardless, even on the fastest connections I know about.