lsupremo Loc: Palm Desert, CA

To buy one year of Carbonate back up costs $120/year, a 2TB Seagate costs about the same. Which one makes the most sense? Or, Should I buy 2 Seagates and or something else which pays for itself in two years and free thereafter?

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Redundancy is important. Having only one backup drive/file is risky. Always have at least two. Some have an external and a cloud backup. The only downside is time it takes to do cloud backups. I'm sure you will hear from others.
Mark

Dave327 Loc: Duluth, GA. USA

From my point of view it is managing risk. I am a remodeling contractor and have seen to many disasters where people have lost everything. I backup with Carbonite, but will be changing to I-drive when my year runs out. I have used backup services ever since they came to the market. A couple of hard drive crashes have proved to me it is worth every penny.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Redundancy is very important. I used Carbonite professionally and found while the backup was realtime and consistent, restoring files was glacially slow.

Get yourself a 2-bay Netgear NAS, populate with hard disks specifically designed for 24/7 NAS use. Configure them for RAID Mirroring. Then you need imaging software like Acronis (recommended) or Vice Versa to create scheduled imaged backups when you system is idle. I've had Netgear NAS's for 6 years and about 4 times I've gotten emails from one of the 5 I have in service that a drive is failing. Easy to replace and it is automatically rebuilt.

I also keep my images on a Drobo 5C, a 5 disk RAID system with similar protection.

The first time you have a system disk failure and can restore without drama, it's paid for itself.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Excellent backup plan, but you also need a 3rd off-site DR (disaster recovery) copy for that unlikely but catastrophic event when your house burns down, floods or a lightning strike takes out both the primary and backup copies. Double drive failures do happen, and when they do, neither RAID 1 (mirroring) or RAID 5 will save your data.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Howsa bout- all the above?
I have a drive from my old G5 that still works; I had a 2 week old Seagate just turn into a humming little heater.
You never know when something will fail. Sooner or later, everything dies.
You can make the secondary drive bootable, then use it as a backup. It;s very handy to have all your work immediately available when you need it.
THAT said, what about a fire? Or theft? Having a copy offsite will save your bacon. The cloud account would/should be available from anywhere.
THAT said, I've heard of many people use their cloud account to replace/reduce their hard drive space. Don't! Too many services went down. Too many got hacked. And too many people complained about too many corrupted files. I use one as a kinda topical backup and shared drive. I can add to it from anywhere, and share portions with other people.
I also still use DVDs. I did a wedding at a RenFaire- huuge amounts of pictures. The really good ones are on a labeled DVD on a spindle, as well as a copy of all of them on the hard drive. She needs a copy- here; I'll burn another one.
BTW, ebay, Firecuda 2tb drives are under $100.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I use 3 external hard drives plus cloud.
1 hard drive on the computer.
1 hard drive at the other end of the house (just in case the computer gets fried).
1 hard drive off site.

At irregular (but moderately frequent) intervals they are all brought together and synchronized. Then the one from the computer goes off site, the one from the other end of the house goes to the computer, and the off site one goes to the other end of the house. That way they get approximately equal usage in the long run.

The cloud backup is my backup backup. Local stuff has convenience and high bandwidth. Cloud stuff has better reliability and low bandwidth.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

$72 ($6/month) for a year for one computer, one hard drive. My pictures, documents, spreadsheets, etc... are worth $6/month. This is what I use, along with two external backups (WD My passport Ultra; HD in a USB dock). Carbonite is off-site and all automatic. My locals are once a month or when I go shoot a ton of photos. I always do tertiary backups.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Working copy on SSD, Backup copy on a separate system, Archive copy on MDisks in a fire proof safe, and $5.00 per month to have a 500 GB DR copy in Amazon S3 for really important files that I can access anywhere with an Internet connection.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'm wondering how many fire proof safes made it through the Paradise fire.
They're probably very good for short duration fires.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Me to. I have a floor standing steel gun type safe for security, and inside I have a second smaller fire proof safe for really valuable objects. It’s the type that the lid actually melts closed and has to be sawed open after a fire. I’ve forgotten the rating, but my oldest son, who is a fire chief, says it’s the best protection available and will survive most fires. I hope I never have to find out.

Bipod

If your bank goes bust, the FDIC will reimburse you up to $100,000 for each account.
Personally, I've been through three FDIC takeovers of banks where I had CDs. No problem.

But if (hypothetically speaking) Carbonite goes bust, who will reimburse you for your data?
For example, if (hypothetically speaking) it fails to make lease payments on its server farm,
what happens to the hard drives containing your data?

Carbonite has only been in business for 13 years. In 2017, it acquired Mozy from Dell Technologies
for $145.8 million -- a considerable outlay. Last month, it acquired Webroot for $618.5 million.
But it only raised $62.5 million in it's IPO in 2011. It has never made a profit.

"Since its inception in 2005, NASDAQ:CARB has lost in excess of $120,000,000 of public and
private investment. The company's SEC financial reports state: `We expect to continue to incur GAAP
operating losses on an annual basis for the foreseeable future'[54]" [emphasis added]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonite_(online_backup)

There is a reason why people say "safe as houses" not "safe as .coms".

Again according to Wikipedia, "In 2009, it admitted loss of backups of "over 7,500 customers" in a lawsuit
filed against Promise Technology, a hardware provider." [op. cit.]

Ooops. So sorry: you're data is gone. Here's a coupon for a free cup of coffee! You're call is important
to us, please stay on the line.

Of course, you've read the reviews on Amazon. Again, according to wiki, "Apparently, employees of the company
posted favorable testimonial-style ads on Amazon in 2006, including those by senior members of the management
team.[55] Additionally, the New York Times reported that the CEO was made aware of the situation in September 2008
but did nothing to remove the false postings until the NY Times blog appeared in January 2009 [56]." [op. cit.]

Finally, who is more likely to be a target for Russian, Chinese or North Korean government hackers--
you, or Carbonite? But you've audited Carbonite's security, right?

But hey, 100,000 lemmings can't be wrong. Jump, lemming, jump! You'll have a soft landing on The Cloud--
the TV ad said so.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, Those Chinese, Russian and North Korean hackers are just dying to go through your 10,000 photos in the cloud, and what did you say was the lifespan of those CDs?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If Carbonite goes bust, I'll find another or just do my own more often.
In the mean time I still have two to three backups.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

For $120 you'll get a 6TB Seagate, add another 10 you you get an 8TB!