Online back is a very popular method of backup these days. It is convenient way to get an off-site backup but is any good and what are the best ones. I’ve used a few of these services and I was mostly pleased with them all. They all work similarly. You sign up, you you download and install a program to your computer, and they start backing up. Some of them require you to fiddle with the settings. For most people this is no good.

These are the services I’ve used…

Carbonite

I was a Carbonite user for a while. I liked it. You install the program and it stares backing-up. I never had a major computer event where I didn’t have a backup will using Carbonite but once I did loose a document that did not get backed up. It was recovered easily. Carbonite price has increased to $72 per year for one computer. There are more options for multiple computers and business.

Backblaze

Backblaze is similar to Carbonite but it is probable more configurable. If I remember correctly, Backblaze will backup USB drive connected to the computer, Carbonite does not. Backblaze cost $60 per year.

Google Drive

For many, many years I used Google Drive as my primary backup. Now called Google One Drive; you can get 100GB of space for only $19.99 per year. You can purchase additional space if you need it. I now have the 100 gigs but I use to have 1TB for $99 per year. I no longer need the one terabyte. Most of that is just archived doc. I’m storing that somewhere cheaper.

Amazon AWS

Amazon S3 is Amazons file storage solution. With S3 you pay per amount of data transferred (both up and down). You also pay for the storage of the data. These prices are very reasonable but it can cost a lot if you do a lot of transfers.

I use an S3 product called Glacier. It is specifically for archival storage. It cost very little for upload and very little for storage but it cost a whole lot to download. I have a terabyte or so of things I want to keep but never change. It cost me 96 cents per month.

S3 is very hard to configure because it does not have an interface just an API. You have to download a third party program like FastGlacier and configure it with the setting in your S3 account. It is somewhat complicated but very cost efficient.

In Conclusion

If you want a service that does just backup use Carbonite, Backblaze, or other service.

If you need functionality use Google One Drive.

If you need archival storage and you don’t mind learning new crap try Glacier.