goldstar46 Loc: Tampa, Fl

Jerry...

BackBlaze just had a 'sale' for $ 89 for three years.... unlimited backup quantity on any one device with the same ip address,,, which means any number of drives inside or 'attached'... I have 3 internals, and 3 external drives...

I think sale went off Sunday night,, but now $ 99 / for 3 years

I currently have 17 TB backed up with them for a cost of $ 2.47/ per month...

Cheers
GeoVz
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goldstar46 Loc: Tampa, Fl

BTW Jerry....

Golden Rule... always 3 copies ...

The Original, one backup on site, and 1 backup off-sit, or the Cloud

Cheers
GeoVz
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TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

He already paid for it. I once calculated (from the list of earnings and deductions provided from SSN) what the return of Social Security is (given the average life expectancy) compared to the return of investing the same amount in the market over that time (not that I am necessarily a fan of the stock market) and the return from social security was a fraction of that from the market. Not saying that’s true for everyone, but for me, unless I live well past 100, I’d have been much better investing it all in a 401K.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I can’t tell you how many double drive failures I’ve seen. Power line surges, lightning hits, A/C failures, floods, fires and data corruption, accidental deletions, viruses or malware affecting both drives are just some of the common reasons. Of all the storage media you can buy, an inexpensive spinning disk is statistically, by far, the most unreliable, and if you use a major provider such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon or similar, cloud storage (or an Mdisk in a safe place) is the most reliable.

goldstar46 Loc: Tampa, Fl

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ElNikkor

I cannot say enough good things about BackBlaze..

I have been with them for 3 years and I just renewed my subscription for an additional 3 years at a cost of $2.47 a month.

My initial loss occurred about 2 years ago when my main PC got hit with a ransom Ware virus. I lost almost 8TB.

I contacted BackBlaze, Who sent me all my data on two, 4TB portable hard drives. I had to pay them a deposit in the front end but, they paid the shipping to me and I had to pay the shipping to return the hard drives. Once the hard drives are returned, I receive a full refund of my deposit.

Wonderful service

Cheers
GeoVz
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David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

IDrive.
For new customers $52.12 for the first year for 5 TB storage, and $69.50 per year thereafter.
However...
If you can prove that you're switching from one of their competitors, such as Carbonite, the first year cost is $6.95.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

As the price increases more people consider whether they really need the service and drop their accounts resulting in the company having to increase the price to stay in business... A vicious spiral resulting in companies ultimately driving themselves out of business!!

bwa

AndyBob Loc: St. Louis

iDrive is a good option. A few package options with up to unlimited storage. And you'll appreciate it, cheaper than Carbonite.

gmsatty Loc: Chicago IL

Take a look at IDrive. They have a great introductory offer sometimes.

MartyM Loc: Monroe, NC

My local NPR station advertised iDrive. Got it for $6.95 for first year then to go to like $60.00 per year after
Marty

HiFromSusan

I don't understand why storage on "a cheap HD" is a bad thing. . . I hesitate to use cloud storage because I don't want to worry about hackers.

I have two cheap HD, one with my photos and the other as a backup. Haven't had a problem with either of them (yet). But if there are problems in the offing, please do let me know!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Fair question. HDs fail, and consumer grade drives fail more readily. In one of Backblaze’s quarterly reports, they had a 34% failure rate of a particular Seagate HD one quarter - all depends on where the drive was manufactured and what model. Enterprise quality drives, which cost 2x the price are 2x better, but still ultimately fail.

You need a local backup (for quick recovery) and a 3rd off-site copy to protect against all those hazards I mentioned above, and if you have a decent internet connection, “the cloud” FROM A MAJOR PROVIDER is the answer - professionally managed, hardened data centers with redundant everything, including power, and multiple copies of your data at different geographical locations. As far as hacking goes, (a) hacker’s aren’t interested in sorting through tens of thousands of personal files looking for that nugget of useful information. They want to hack sites like Equifax where there are nice neat databases of information (yours is already there) including SSNs, etc., in nice neat databases which they can harvest and sell. And (b) If you’re really worried about your sensitive personal data, use two factor authentication (always a good idea) and encrypt it (safe, but don’t lose your private key).

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

With a good backup strategy you're safer with harddrives than you are with cloud storage. At the very least you're in control of your data. Simply do two backups on a regular basis and store one offsite.

An additional data safeguard would be running RAID 1 with HDD's or SSD's.

bwa

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

No sir, HDs are not safer, they are MUCH less reliable, and control is not the issue, reliability/availability is. If you use your strategy, you are subject to: drive failure (a large percentage of drive failures occur on startup after being down for extended periods), fire and flood (even in a bank vault), lost data between trips to the bank, inconvenience and failure to make the trip weekly, and most of all - corruption/malware/accidental deletions/viruses that propagate from the primary to the backup drive, making the backup useless. Most cloud services allow versioning and protection against accidental deletion. Get over the paranoia - your personal data (financial, medical, military, SSN, etc) is already in the cloud, as is data from the CIA & NSA and 2/3rds of every company in the US and almost ever site you log in to.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

You do it your way, I'll do it mine! I've lost far too much data in offsite/cloud storage (both personal and business) to ever fully trust someone else with my data!!

bwa