Anyone use an automatic backup service?

I just had my computer crash and had to pay a lot to ge my data recovered.

I am looking for a web service with which I can set certian files or folders to be backed up at a particular frequency (daily, weekly, monthly).

Does anyone know of such a service?

Just curious, why a web service that offers this and not a backup software such as retrospect that does it locally?

Seems like it would be to hard on the bandwith and your connection to actually have your files backed up accross the internet.

Hey superdetail.

You might check this one out ATT backup

I've been pondering doing this also--I backup regularly (and automatically) to a remote network drive in my office, but it's not a bad idea to have your data in a very remote location as well.

Martini,

Not an expensive idea as far as $$ goes, but when you back up to your network drive you probably transfer data at 100Mbps, if you get this deal with AT&T you are going to be transferring data to them at whatever your high speed internet is. At best case, you high speed upload is going to be 1Mbps, have you ever noticed how long it takes to try to upload 50MB files via your internet connection?

I had one of these one time, and it was just painfully slow and ineffective.

Super, I hope you find the right sollution, and solve your problem, but at the cost of HDs being so low these days together with the right backup software that can automate the process, you should easily be able to cover your needs. If its an off site backup, then get two or three HDs and just take one home with you.

I agree. With drives from Maxtor hitting the 1TB range, its just easier and quicker to run the backups locally.

I run Second Copy at home to external drives
http://www.centered.com
At work our systems all back up to a server and external daily which go offsite.

As Shane said easy to do local backups and most new external drives include software to do this.

Dave

Thanks for all the ideas.

I guess I really don't need to send the data over the internet. Here is what I really need.

A simple way to backup data on multiple computers, automatically. That is, I don't want to have to remember to do the backups, I want the computer to do it.

So...is it as simple as buying an external drive, and finding a software that will automatically make copies of the important files to the drive?

One other thing,

I do not trust my data with a third party. Not just the idea of them loosing it, but the idea, that they or there employees can view it.

The data is in my office and my house, I can control who sees it. When it is at some ISP in some place accross the country or world that I will never travel to, I can't trust that all of the people there are trustworthy.

www.mozy.com 2 gigs free automated remote backup over the web.

I use FolderShare (www.foldershare.com) to replicate all the critical data on our systems. The software doesn't backup settings, just files.

I keep 2 cheap computers off-site just for this purpose, and they all replicate constantly. It updates all of the systems whenever a file is changed or added/removed, so you're we're not trying to push 2GB of data across the network at one time.

Oh, and it's free.

Does corrupted data get replicated with this setup? or is there some way to go back in time and restore non-corrupted data?

What every you do, don't buy or get a backup service, instead develop a backup system that utilizeds backup services, software, hardware or a combination of them. As is being discussed in another thread, don't do like and develop a backup strategy that only allows you to go back 24hrs with your backup.

If I understand your question, everything you identify gets replicated, so if the source data is corrupted then the replicated data will be corrupted.