Choosing an Online Storage or Backup Service
Help me choose a good online storage or backup service, please!
I have two primary machines. An HP dv5t running Windows Vista and a MacBook Pro running OS X Leopard (to be fair, I use my Mac a lot more than my HP lately). Anyway, I backup both machines locally to external hard drives. That seems like a sensible thing to do.
But what happens if a catastrophe happens and the external drives melt down, burn in a fire or get stolen. It seems prudent to have an offsite storage or backup plan.
While this seems obvious, I am having the damnedest time trying to figure out which service to use. Here are my optimal criteria for any service, in order of importance:
- Mac and PC compatible
- Secure upload and download transactions (e.g., 128-bit SSL)
- Secure online storage (e.g., 256-bit AES encryption)
- Allows encrypted or password-protected files to be uploaded and stored
- Allowing both archiving and incremental backups
- Initial X number of GB of free storage; or at the very least a lengthy free trial
- Ability to choose a personal encryption key or use a service provided one
- Ability to upload files via a web interface and a desktop client
- Decent upload speeds (i.e., no throttling before 1 Mbps)
- Flexible subscription plans (e.g., discounts for yearly payments, different monthly plans for the amount of storage you need, ability to change plans at will)
I haven’t found a service that meets all of the above requirements, nor do I expect to. However, I am still having trouble choosing one. Below is a list of possibilities. The ones that are struck out I have tried or researched and decided it won’t work for the reason specified. The ones in red are on the verge of being discounted for the reason specified. The others I have not tried yet.
Mozy(cannot upload encrypted files, especially Mac encrypted disk images)- Apple MobileMe (uploads to iDisk are not transferred via SSL when using the browser. I am not sure of the protocol when uploading directly from Finder. Relatively expensive per year)
- Microsoft SkyDrive
- iDrive (Looks promising)
- DropBox (Looks promising)
Carbonite(no Mac client)- Slicehost (This is my webhost. Is it wise to use a webhost as a backup mechanism, even though you might change hosts down the line??)
- Amazon S3 (Cost prohibitive?)
- iBackup
- ElephantDrive
- Box.Net
- JungleDisk
- <Other???>
Any suggestions? Am I missing some criteria?
I would appreciate the help.


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[...] in December, I wrote about my desire to choose an online backup service. Since then, I am still without a true service (I am doing some hodgepodge things right now to give [...]