What 'cloud' backup to use ?

[psj3809]

Recently lost a ton of data from my external hard drive so now i'm looking to use a 'cloud' storage site. Been looking at Dropbox which looks perfect apart from the price (Think theyre about £70 quid for 100 gig a year), Skydrive from Microsoft is much cheaper (£33 for £100 gig a year) but their software doesnt work on Win XP which is a pain.

Both have decent apps for iOS which is handy, seen quite a few others as well but theres so many i'm unsure who to sign up to.

Have any of you gone for online storage and paid for it ? (Eg not just the free 5 or 7 gig accounts etc).

[The Angry Jock]

I use MS SkyDrive as it's 25GB for free, and my phone automatically uploads pics to it, I don't really like the useability of it, some of it seems needlessly fiddly. A guy I work with uses Google (can't remember the exact name), I checked it out, looks very easy to use and maintain...I've been thinking about signing up as I've accumulated several 100GB of stuff I don't want to lose.

[psj3809]

Cheers fella, yeah i was too late to sign up to Skydrive so i've only got 7 gig free not 25.

Would go with Skydrive just they dont have a Windows XP installation file to use (Only Win 7 etc), have to do it via hotmail/liveaccount or whatever which is a pain. Must admit they're very good to use, even though i've got another external drive i've learnt my lesson not to solely depend on it (£375 quid to get my data !)

And yeah all those 'videos' add up in size dont they

[MattyC64c]

I've only used free services so far, I keep my big backups on DVD Dual Layer discs. I'm currently using SkyDrive, my main one is 25GB, but you can't get that size anymore for free. I have 3 Windows live ID's though, so altogether I've got 39GB with them. I also use DropBox and Google Drive. All of these services are very easy to use too.

If you use any of Microsoft's online services, you automatically get a Sky Drive account. The same holds true for Google. If you use Gmail or YouTube, you'll already have have Google Drive account.

[MattyC64c]

I'll just add that I've been using my SkyDrive on my iPad to read my PDF versions of Retro Gamer that I got from the Emag discs. Works a treat.

[psj3809]

I'll just add that I've been using my SkyDrive on my iPad to read my PDF versions of Retro Gamer that I got from the Emag discs. Works a treat.

Yeah thats one of the things i really like, eg my .cbr files of graphic novels i can download/read in an app and same for the PDF's as you say. Dropbox is great as you can download a film/music to be watched/listened to offline which is cool. Just a shame Dropbox is double the price of Skydrive, but i like Dropbox's interface for XP. If Skydrive had their software for XP it would be great, just have to do it via hotmail etc.

Getting all my data back later tonight so need to sort out an online backup. Decisions decisions ! Pro's and con's for each one!

[TMR]

For everyday data, my main desktop has two 80Gb IDE drives (and a third 80Gb SATA it boots from) which are mirrored and i'm planning on setting up a NAS box or an open share as a dumping ground when i get time (i have a box in mind to recondition, but right now it's "buried" in a corner of the front room and i'll need a couple of parts). For the most important documents (my source code, Retro Gamer workfiles and so on) i've got a free 2Gb Dropbox account that synchronises to five machines including my laptop, the server and one box "off site" at work - that's possibly overkill, but a year or so ago i had an important drive that failed over time and scared me into being cautious.

[necronom]

Over a year ago I uploaded loads of stuff to ADrive. You get 50Gb free, though you had to use their upload page to send files and it was a bit fiddly. I think they have updated things recently, so it might be better now (I haven't uploaded anything since the initial week).

http://www.adrive.com/

[sscott]

Cloud? I have a 32GB memory stick.

[psj3809]

I've got tons of photos i want to make sure are backed up safely, tons of music as well and a few films. Its way more than 32 gig for me !

Deleted that spam post about another cloud service. Even if that service was 1.99 a year i wouldnt do it due to the way they must get people to spam it.

By the way i went for Dropbox for a year, 70 quid, pricier than the others, working well though. Taking forever to initially back everything up but getting there. Be quite cool loading up certain files onto my ipod/ipad from the 'cloud' whenever i want

[TMR]

I've got tons of photos i want to make sure are backed up safely, tons of music as well and a few films. Its way more than 32 gig for me !

That's the sort of level where backup hard drives come in really; build a NAS box out of scrap and spares, hide it in a corner of the house and eventually this could happen to you! =-)

Deleted that spam post about another cloud service. Even if that service was 1.99 a year i wouldnt do it due to the way they must get people to spam it.

And any service being advertised by spam (and it popped up again whilst i was writing this reply) is dodgy enough that they probably won't be around long and folks should think very carefully about trusting the thing their private data...