TR Forums

I happen to like JungleDisk. It has a little program that runs in the background that will run on a schedule, and it does versioning as well as data de-dupliction. If you go with the business workstation plan, it's $4 per user then $0.15 per gigabyte over 10GB.

I've been using Crashplan. Very much a set and forget solution. In fact, I had to take a few seconds to remember the name of the service!

I pay ~$6 a month, and I'm storing over 100 GB of data. This is for one computer, though; multiple computers cost more.

My strategy is to use Syncplicity to sync data (I get Syncplicity free, for various work-related reasons) between my laptops and my desktop, and then the desktop backs up to Crashplan.

I also have local backups on a external drive. Btw, Crashplan can backup to external drives, the cloud, as well as a friends machine (over the internet). The only option that costs is storing data on their servers; the others are free.

Caveat: I haven't yet had to restore anything from Crashplan, so I can't speak to the quality of their restore process.

+1 on Crashplan.

I second Crashplan as a backup solution - both to the cloud as well as locally and to friend's/family machines. I ran the free version for almost a year before I bought the 4 year family plan that lets me backup 10 machines with unlimited storage. Unless I'm missing a pretty major feature, Crashplan is only a backup solution - not really a cloud storage solution, per se. For that type of solution (storage in the cloud and syncing between multiple machines) I have used both Skydrive and Dropbox. Both of those solutions could serve as a sort of backup for the documents you store there, as they support versioning of the documents, but their real functionality lies in ease of syncing and sharing between users/computers.

frumper15 wrote:

Unless I'm missing a pretty major feature, Crashplan is only a backup solution - not really a cloud storage solution, per se. For that type of solution (storage in the cloud and syncing between multiple machines) I have used both Skydrive and Dropbox. Both of those solutions could serve as a sort of backup for the documents you store there, as they support versioning of the documents, but their real functionality lies in ease of syncing and sharing between users/computers.

JungleDisk has the syncing between the machines built in. With the workstation plan, you can flag folders, and it will sync then across machines with the client installed. It also has the ability to publicly share files as well.

OP - if you're not looking for a cloud based solution, I assume you're looking for something like a "remote backup" solution?

The FreeNAS OS (a stripped and modified version of FreeBSD), and white-box/OEM hardware works well for DIY NAS machines, and there are several ways to get it to work online, as well as your local network. Are you looking for something self-hosted or hosted by a trusted party? Set up a FressNAS box and that should do the trick.

I've been using BackBlaze. It's $5/mo if billed monthly or cheaper if you pay for a year or 2 at a time. That gets you unlimited storage for one PC for that amount. I've been very happy with them for 2 years I've been using them. They open-sourced the blueprint for their storage "pods" (servers) which is how I first heard of them.

Do you want something that will show the cloud storage as a network drive that people would then work off of from all computers?

Axe man, what is it you are trying to do here? Cloud based with someone else maintaining it? (Google drive or drop box and truecrypt)

DIY server hosted by you or someone else?

I second the Crashplan recommendation. I've been using it for 1.5 years and I love it. 2 laptops, one desktop and one company file server completely backup up, with multiple versions of everything and automatic background backup.

Once set up, you never have to lift a finger again. Seriously cool, and for individual folders and files, it's proven its worth about half a dozen times already.