As per title really. I've finally just built myself a new HTPC, but I really need to backup my files properly now as I'm getting nervous as my collection of films & tv shows is growing.

 

I'm currently researching to build myself a NAS setup running FreeNAS and RAIDZ2 or Z3 so that I have good redundancy against drive failures. This won't be implemented immediately due to financial constraints - plus I'm looking to run 6-8 drives which won't be cheap!

 

Therefore in the meantime I'm looking at online cloud storage for a monthly/annual fee. Plus this secures me against theft of my drives or any other random things like fires etc..., as even a NAS wouldn't protect against this.

 

Can I get people's opinions on which services are good yet reasonable please? I would like to be able to backup at least 3 computers and be able to stream my movies when away from home.

 

Thanks all

Hi Alex.

Have you thought about using dropbox?

 

I am too running a home NAS solution running FreeNAS and the minute I make a change to the file structure on that RAID it syncs the new file with dropbox.

Kind of running two side by side.

Might be better to actually pay for one since if you use a free one you could be left hanging.

 

You'd probably want something that will allow you to transfer the data to a new host without having to reupload yourself.

 

http://www.which.co.uk/technology/software/guides/how-to-choose-the-best-cloud-storage-service/the-best-value-cheap-cloud-storage-services/

 

Dropbox is about the only provider to offer unlimited but MS Onedrive you get 1Tb with Office 365. If you look on Ebay plenty of people are selling cheap O365 licenses from their Windows tablets. Seems to got for £15 quite regularly which wouldn't be a bad deal.

Edited 5 October, 201510 yr by Aspman

Dropbox offer unlimited space, but they also know what you're uploading (or at least they used to, they would deduplicate uploads even between accounts which implies that the at-rest encryption was using the same key for all accounts, or that they had access to decrypt all at-rest data). May not be suitable for OP's copyrighted works.

 

For properly private storage (verified by the EFF), SpiderOak would get my vote, I've been a customer since about 2009 and aside from some early issues with the client just after it left beta, I've been very happy with it.

 

Alternatively, if you have friends with equal storage and fast connections, you'd almost be better off using something like CrashPlan/BitTorrent to just do it peer-peer, giving you free offsite backups without privacy risk.

Check out www.jottacloud.COM

Havent tried it myself, but its supposed to be good.

Couple of other options as freenas has rsync tasks.

 

You could use S3 which is pay as you go and only gets expensive on access, so for pushing incremental dumps it's cheap as chips.

 

Or grab a cheap vps with lots of space and push to it. I use backupsy ( << aff link ) for my vps backups and occasionally push from my 2 freenas boxes, they rsync between themselves. ZFS Z2 I think is ok, go for more if you cannot ever recreate or obtain the files ever... I use Z2 with 4x1Tb's to get 1.8Tb ish in 2 hp microservers. I don't have a lot of films to backup As you're looking to dump offsite then really a loss of 2 or more drives in quick succession is going to be the time to download from your cloud.

 

You could also consider running owncloud, just find a host with enough disk and off you go. I use digitalocean; another aff link as they are quick and fairly cheap/reliable, but not massive disks. They do have a one click installer for owncloud, although you need to secure the instances . It helps they have canada dc, new and US ones, in case you were in need of a offshore point of presence .

 

I also use dropbox, which is about as expensive as a good vps would be for the year. i.e. when I get to it, I'll replace with owncloud as it has client support that works for arch etc.

 

Then finally, buy another nas+ups, put it at your folks/mates place and let them rsync...  I also use a eql size disk for my machine on usb3, I rsync my home dir to it every now and again and stash with neighbour when on holiday

Jesus Col. And there's me with just a simple 150GB Onedrive. Lol