I just recently did a new reinstall of Win 7 after my notebook crashed and I was wondering if anyone might know of some good free online backup programs.I thought that I got Cloud free but they are saying I have to pay.I dont have a whole lot that I want to store.Mainly just my hardrives and Win 7 so I wont have to start all over again.Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.Thanks!!
I would stay away from free cloud backups; they are notorious for disappearing with little or no warning. For only $5/mo or so, you can get unlimited backup space from Carbonite.com (disclaimer: I do not work for them, I'm just a satisfied customer). Mozy used to have a similar plan but recently discounted the unlimited part. CrashPlan's also has a similar plan but their servers are notoriously slow. Carbonite automatically works in the background to encrypt new data and upload it to their servers. Depending on your settings, you will never notice it working.
A caution about cloud backups. No media is fail safe. The cloud, HDDs, optical disks, flashdrives, etc. can all fail. To avoid a catastrophic loss, redundant backups are vital. One should have a minimum of two backups, at least one of which should be offsite. See here (post #964) for the backup scheme I use. It may seem anal and expensive but it reasonably ensures that I will never use my data.
Before you go in for cloud backup work out how much data you need to backup and compare it with your internet upload speed and any data cap you may have.. You will probably find that it will take too long to backup much data and you will rapidly use up your data cap.
The first backup to a cloud backup service can take a while but once that is done, the only bandwidth used is the new data being sent. If a monthly cap is less than the amount to be initially uploaded, many plans allow selective backups that can be limited to a few folders, then, as available bandwidth becomes available, folders can be added until the entire volume has been uploaded.
Some plans have the ability to return uploaded data on a HDD when the amount is so large, downloading it would take too long. At least one allows initial data to be sent on a 1-2TB HDD to the service for all are part of the total volume to be uploaded.
Some ISPs may permit a temporary increase of a cap for a month to allow for a large upload.
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