Data Backup
Update:
People are storing their data in the cloud more so the backup is in the cloud, good as long as you trust the service provider will not loose your data.
Overview:
You should always have two good backups of your data (one local and one off site) in case of hard drive failure, theft, fire, flood or natural disaster.
Home users can store data on an external USB drive (the main C: drive is frequently attacked by malware).
Hard drives last an average of 5 years before failing.
What I use and recommend:
- CrashPlan for all data. http://www.crashplan.com
- Google Photos for photos. http://photos.google.com
- YouTube for videos. http://www.youtube.com
Data Backup
Good:
CrashPlan offers free backup to local storage, a free trial for online backup, and is less expensive than Mozy.
SOS offers cloud backup and backup of your facebook account
Dropbox offers 2 GB of free online storage, plus data sync between computers and, an instant online photo album with photos from your dropbox\photo folder.
Western Digital WD SmartWare Automatic Continuous Backup.
Not tested:
SkyDrive from Microsoft offers 7 GB of storage on the web and sync between Windows PCs -- free.
Google Drive offers 5 GB free and 30 GB for $2.95 / month
BuddyBackup allows free backup to your buddies (and they can't read your files).
Carbonite offers a free trial and is less expensive than Mozy.
IDrive offers 2 GB of free online storage. Other than that their price is expensive (in 2010).
Not Recommended:
Mozy offers 2 GB of free online storage. I've heard (from the horse's mouth) about restores where the data is corrupt. Restored data must be uncompressed
Mozy had many backup failures. Retrys and re-installs would temporarily fix it, then the errors would return.
Photo Backup
Good:
Google Photos has face recognition and if you sign up with Google+ photo storage is free as long as the photos are under 2048 x 2048 pixels. Also, when I checked in 2011 Google has the best value for online photo storage.
Flickr offers 1 TB of free storage.
Dropbox offers 2 GB of free online storage, plus data sync between computers and, an instant online photo album with photos from your dropbox\photo folder.
Webshots offers free storage for 1000 photos.
Not tested:
SmugMug offers unlimited storage for an annual fee.
Windows Live Photo Gallery with people tagging offers 25 GB of free storage.
Local Backup
Good:
USB external hard drives offer fast backup. Still prone to physical damage, liquid spills, fire and theft.
A bare hard drive can be put it into one of these enclosures:
Enclosures: 2.5" IDE & SATA
Enclosures: 3.5" IDE & SATA
If you need the drive with the case:
External 2.5"
External 3.5"
If you have a computer that will not boot, you can usually rescue the data by placing the drive into an external USB hard drive enclosure so that you can then transfer the data to a working computer.