I go on and on about how important backup up your data is. All hard disks fail eventually, and when they do, you’ll lose all your stuff–including your personal pictures and home videos.

So, you need to backup. I tell most people to buy a USB drive a bit bigger than their computer’s C:\ drive and use that for backups. That works well and protects you from a failed hard disk or accidentally deleted files–but it doesn’t protect you from fire or theft, because you’d lose your backup drive, too.

Businesses do off-site backups for disaster recovery. Basically they take their backup drives or tapes to a different location that they can get to if something goes really bad. That doesn’t work well for people, though, because even if you buy a second external drive and take it to a friend’s house, you’ll forget to do it regularly. For the home user (myself included), backups must be automated or they’ll be forgotten.

Enter online backup services, which copy files from your computer to a server on the Internet. When you lose your data, you download it back from them. I checked out the major online backup services and found one that’s working for me.

Online backup services either charge based on how many GB of data you upload or they give you a flat monthly rate. Some of those with the flat monthly rate cap the amount of data you can store to, say, 100GB. I have about a terabyte (1,000 GB) to backup. That means paying per GB is out of the question for me, and I’m way past any caps. If you don’t have as much data, the math might be different.

Consider customer service as you’re evaluating online backups. When you do need to restore files, you’ll discover that it’s not the backing up that’s important–it’s the restoring. You’ll be really disappointed in the service if you can’t access your files or if some of your files are missing.

Most of these services offer similar feature sets–they backup and restore your files. Some of the distinguishing features are:

• Support for MacOS X and Linux in addition to Windows
• Storing multiple revisions of a file (in case you need to go back to a version of a Word file from two months ago)
• Sharing files with other users
• Software includes local backup capabilities (not required with Windows Vista or Windows 7)
• Business, enterprise, or server backup (note that I focus on backups for home users)

The limitations were more important than the features to me. Some limitations of different services include:

• Limiting the amount of backups per month
• Not backup up network drives
• Not backing up external drives
• Not backing up large files over a specific size

I also recommend picking one of the big services–you don’t want your backup service going out of business. Keep these factors in mind as you review my notes of the individual services.

Unlimited Online Backup Services

If you have more than 100GB of data, I suggest choosing an unlimited backup service. I can’t fathom how they can make money redundantly storing a terabyte of data for me for $5/month, but it’s not my problem!

MozyHome – $5/month Unlimited

Ultimately I selected MozyHome: cheap, a fixed rate with unlimited storage, and with some exceptions, generally good reviews. MozyHome also allows me to throttle the upstream bandwidth and schedule backups at night, which is important because my upstream connection must be shared nicely with my self-hosted photo album.

The $5/month covers one computer, so if you have multiple computers, you’ll need to pay $5/month for each of them. You can’t backup shared folders.

Once your backup starts, double-check to make sure everything is being backed up. If a folder shows a grey check box, that means not everything in the folder is being backed up. For me, MozyHome automatically de-selected files over 50MB. I have LOTS of files over 50MB–including many videos that I’ve recorded for work. Hey, I have a 1080P video camera–even a few minutes of video exceed a gigabyte.

MozyHome offers 2 GB of storage for free, so if you just have a few files, go ahead and take advantage of them.

Carbonite – $5/month Unlimited

Users complain Carbonite won’t backup all file types, even if you select them. This is okay for the average user. If you’re a developer and you want to make sure your MSIs are backed up, you can manually choose to backup other file types.

Carbonite won’t backup external drives, which is a problem for me. Otherwise, they’re very comparable to MozyHome.

CrashPlan – $4.50/month Unlimited

CrashPlan can store multiple versions of a file (in case you need to go back to an earlier revision) and they provide both local and off-site backups. Of course, you don’t really need the local backups if you’re using Vista or Windows 7, because they have backup software built-in.

CrashPlan offers a “seeding” service which starts your backup by shipping storage the old fashioned way–with UPS. This helps to overcome the VERY LONG initial backup period. For MozyHome, the initial backup has taken months. I didn’t mind waiting because I have local backups anyway, but if you’re willing to spend some time with shipping, this is a nice feature.

CrashPlan charges you more for constant backup without ads, so you might not actually get the $4.50/month price and be happy with it.

CrashPlan also offers a Linux client.

ElephantDrive – $5/month Unlimited

ElephantDrive works, but they limit files to 1 GB each. If you upgrade to their $10/month plan (which allows up to 4 computers to be backed up), they’ll backup files up to 2GB in size. I still need bigger files, but most people don’t.

You can also use it for file sharing on the Internet, because you can upload any file.

Like CrashPlan, ElephantDrive can store multiple revisions of files.

BackBlaze – $5/month Unlimited

Files are limited to 4GB each and they can store multiple revisions of files.

Space-Limited Online Backup Services

If you don’t have that much data, these might be good for you:

iDrive – $5/month for 150GB or $15/month for 500GB

Free 2GB backups and they store multiple versions of your files.

SpiderOak – $10/mo per 10GB or $100/year per 100GB

They support Windows, MacOS X, and Linux and store multiple versions of files, but the per-gigabyte pricing would get expensive for me. They provide file-sharing capabilities, too

Dropbox: $10/month for 10GB or $20/month for 100GB

They support Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. Like MozyHome, they give you 2GB for free. DropBox makes sharing files with other users easier, so it actually provides services beyond basic backup and restore.

SOSOnline: $30/year for 5GB or $50/year for 15GB

Their software provides local backup, too. The low storage limits eliminated SOSOnline as an option for me.

IBackup: $1/gb/month

IBackup is more of a business-oriented service, and their pricing reflects that. Supports Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. Their simple pricing plan turns out to be awful if you have large amounts of data, as I do.

Summary

If you want an easy choice, just pick MozyHome like I did (I don’t have a business relationship with them–I’m not being paid), double-check that all your important files are being backed up, and go on with your life.

There are MANY other online backup services that I haven’t reviewed: Syncplicity, Humyo, Data Desposit Box, Zectar Zumodrive, Livedrive, Microsoft Live Mesh, BullGuard, Fabrik, and others! As I mentioned above, try to stick with one of the big providers to reduce the risk that they’ll have terrible service when you need a restore or that they go bankrupt on you.

If you have real-world experience with a backup service, please describe it in the comments.