Online backup

[rdy2go]

Anybody use an online backup solution? I've heard some good things about CrashPlan. Looks like it will be $5 per month for me to do unlimited backups. Any other good alternatives out there?

http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/compare.html

[Scallica]

Carbonite is a popular solution; $60/year for unlimited storage. Google drive is 5GB free, Microsoft Skydrive is 7GB free.

Amazon S3 is $0.12 per GB per month (plus very minimal transfer fees).

[bobbob]

you see if that sort of deal were available in the UK i'd use the cloud as my primary storage and keep one set of disks for back up. combining unlimited space (I have c16Tb of media) with my high speed fibre connection (40Mb/s) would mean local storage would be a thing of the past.

you'd have to keep your own back up copies still

[mark1234]

carbonite.co.uk sends you to a page offering $60/year, and the google/SkyDrive offers are available here as well. With that speed I assume you're on BT Infinity? I don't know if they offer anything, Virgin do offer an online backup solution and on their higher tiers it's unlimited as well.

Unfortunately I suspect 16Tb will stretch the definition of "unlimited" used by any of these companies.

[bobbob]

sky's fibre optic service, not sure what its called. i wasn't being entirely serious yet, but its something i'm keen on future. is 40Mb/s fast enough to stream a full quality 1080p blu-ray rip?

and no, these "unlimited" services always seem to have limits in the small print. a fair usage policy is not unlimited and its false advertising in my book!

[mark1234]

Sky resell BT Infinity, so it's the same thing you've got, just a different logo on the bill.

It's confusingly written, but according to the source of all truth (Wikipedia), the maximum bitrate for a BD is 54Mb/s, which is someway above your 40Mb/s. Not all (any?) films will run at the maximum rate though, and if you compress the file any then you would be inside your bandwidth capacity.

Sky (or BT) don't do any bandwidth capping on the Infiniti product at the moment, but if they do in the future, then you'd hit that very quickly streaming an uncompressed movie. You're also going to be affected by who else in your local area is using Infiniti. So it's probably unrealistic for the moment. I suspect it will be possible in the not too distant future though.

these "unlimited" services always seem to have limits in the small print. a fair usage policy is not unlimited and its false advertising in my book!

OFCOM don't agree with you. They've defined limits for "unlimited". Virgin don't use the word anymore in their advertising, instead preferring to invent a new word: Unlimitacular.

[bobbob]

Unlimitacular. The Day Today could not have done it better