I know that this probably OT, but in light of Kevin's tragic loss of his house, bus and computers, it might help someone here. Many of us depend on our computers for our livelihood and when something like a major fire occurs, on site backups are all but worthless.
I have been using Carbonite, http://www.carbonite.com/, and I'm quite pleased with the results. It costs $55.00 per year for unlimited backup. The initial backup takes several days, working in the background and after that it only takes seconds. I backed up about 4.3 gig on my main machine then restored it to a laptop. Worked great. I did all this during the 30 day free trial but have now subscribed.
No financial interest here, just want to share.
Len
I recommend Carbonite to my customers & have not had any problems with it.
TOM
I have this little gem and it does a beautiful job:.
http://buy.goclickfree.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=225%2D1003%2D100
Like some others, it's automatic and takes longer on the first use. But it's yours and has no recurring charges. Plug it into a USB port and it goes to work automatically. I back up once a week and it takes about 10 minutes. I highly recommend it.
tg
USB backup drives are great for protecting against data loss in case of a main hard drive failure. But I tend to agree with the context of the OP. In a fire, your priority is going to be saving human lives and pet lives. It is very likely that grabbing the back drive off the computer won't even cross your mind until it is already toast. The same can go for other disasters. I've lived through a major earthquake and F5 tornado's. When seconds count on saving lives, information and hardware isn't on your mind.
Dilligent, secure offsite backups with reputable service providers would solve that concern. I would still recommend a USB drive in addition to the remote backup. That way, if your main drive fails, you can restore data much faster. An average person with just documents, email and some photos to back up could probably use a USB thumb drive. They come in sizes up to 64GB so far. Since my recent major hard drive failure, I got a cheap 8GB to keep my most critical files backed up on.
Call me paranoid, but I just don't trust placing my computer data in the hands of somebody else. Not that I have missile launch codes stored on my hard drive, I just want to know that my stuff is private and secure. I just see too many holes in the internet based offsite services.
Anytime you are sending data back and forth across the net, it is open to potential evesdropping. Also, while Carbonite and others may claim they are secure, I'll bet Bank of America said the same thing before their credit card database was hacked. As I understand these services, a program is loaded onto your computer which gives a remote site control to move files back and forth between your hard drive and theirs. That just rubs me the wrong way. Even if your data is of a nature that you wouldn't mind sharing it with the world, there are also virus passing concerns.
Backup policies need to be designed around your needs. Online storage works fine for some people, and can be free if your needs are simple. One simple way is to create a web-based email account (gmail.com, for instance) and email copies of any important documents to it periodically.
If you have large amounts of important data, you'll likely want to make your own copies on USB drives or DVD's. Move them to some trusted alternate site. Bank safety-deposit box's are one option. Establish a regular backup cycle, and have two or more sets of backups so that you never have all copies at the same place at the same time.
One thing that's sometimes overlooked: If you have expensive software, you need to back up the original discs along with any license info and keys. For some professionals, the software is worth far more than the computer it's installed on.
For what it's worth I was with a professional programmer just last week who told me that he backs up everything on-line despite having (literally) dozens of terrabytes of storage space available across multiple disks. The actual data transfer is fully encrypted, but I'm not sure about the security of the stored data against the attentions of the back-up company's own staff should they be so motivated to try to access it.
Jeremy
$55.00 a year for 4 gigs....You've got to be kidding......and I'm sure some hacker will be very happy sometime down the road. I'd use some backup software and a usb drive and keep it in a separate building or in a fire proof box or safe. If you full time keep all your important stuff near an exit so you can grab it or keep it in a safe. Emergency situations don't happen every day so we tend to get sloppy.
I'm really not trying to sell this, just pointing that I like it.
However, just to clarify, the backup is unlimited, 4 gigs is just what I did the first time out. The most important thing to me is that once set up, there is nothing else to do, no schedules, nothing to remember. It just quietly backs up every file change as it happens. It also saves deleted files for a period of time.
There is also the advantage of being able to access your files from any computer even if your home machine is off.