Comments on: Back up your mom with Crashplan

Crashplan is a secure backup service that uses hard drives on your friends' PCs and Macs to store your files.

[tech_smart24]

Try IBackup for class and perfection

Take a look at IBackup (http://www.ibackup.com) as it has a large number of powerful features for easy backups and restores of your data. IBackup for Windows (http://www.ibackup.com/ibwin_new.htm) can do interactive backup and restore and also schedule regular online backups for Windows desktops, laptops and servers. IBackup accounts are compatible with most FTP clients on most platforms providing a powerful flexible tool to transfer files. IBackup supports backups for UNIX and Linux-based computers using rsync.

'IDrive' enables you to map the IBackup online storage account as a local drive on your computer. You can then drag-and-drop, edit and save files in your online backup account using IDrive. Backing up multimedia files is very easy with IBackup. I use their application called IDrive Multimedia for this purpose. All that is needed is to simply move the multimedia files to the IBackup account and then play them with IDrive Multimedia. You will get instant streaming and you can do fast forward also.

You can share files and folders by creating sharable links with ?Web-Manager? and emailing these links to others. You can also password protect your files and folders, so that they can only be viewed by people who are supposed to view them. You can even `privately share? data instantly with another IBackup user with Web-Manager. The private share feature can be disabled at any time.

You can also try other IBackup applications like IBackup Professional (http://www.ibackup.com/professional), in which data is encrypted with a user-defined key so that the data stored on IBackup Professional servers cannot be decrypted by anybody other than you.

[feduchin]

Simply buy an external hard drive!

For a cost of less than $100 why not buy an external drive?
All this "sexy" talk about backing up on line or over a lan seems to me the hard way, and usually slooow.
To back up complete systems why not use drive2drive for Win98 etc, or CasperXP (made by the same company) for XP systems?
I have backed up my accounting system file to the Internet; www.box.net; and it takes ages for just 5Mb!
One thing though, if you do use an external hard drive you MUST have at least two partitions. This is to obviate the risk of accidentally formatting your backup drive, as happened to me once! (I didn't recover for days.)
But it's far quicker than backing up to anywhere offsight, whether Internet or friendly lan.

[BunchOfFun]

External hard drive only part of the package

Why do we backup data? To retreive data for unforseen circumstances.

Relying on an external hard drive is not a safe way backup your data.

When you plug an external USB drive in your computer it shows up as a drive letter. A few years ago I got a virus that scanned my entire computer and others on the network and replaced every MS Office file (.XLS, .DOC., etc) with a zero byte file. I could replace the data because it was backed up on my website via automated FTP using Handy Backup.

Also, what happens when there's a fire in your house? Hurricane? Tornado? Theft? All those digital photos & videos of your family gone.

Offsite backup is inexpensive when you look at the potential cost of having to replace that data. Some things you can never get back, especially personal photos & videos. Is internet backup slow? Yup. But if you've got a high speed connection and you schedule the backup overnight who cares?

If you rarely create new data then you could probably get away with burning a DVD once a month and giving it to a friend for safe storage.

And if you're not backing up, do it right now! I've had relatives literally crying because they lost irreplaceable photos of their children.

Thanks CNet for bringing up this very important topic!