Backing up large video projects via the Internet is completely impractical. Just rent a safe deposit box at your bank, back your stuff up to a few hard drives and store if offline there. You could get something like the Thermaltake BlacX SATA/USB dock for about $40 and some 750gig drives for about $120/each.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066&Tpk=blacx

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152100

I agree, internet sites are totally impractical for storage. For example, it took 6 hours for me to upload a 1 gig project to the Sony FTP site when I reported a bug in Vegas 8 Pro.

I use the Thecus N5200Pro for Network Attached Storage (NAS). I'm running RAID 5 with five 1TB drives. This has been working out very well. It is accessible from my desktop, laptop, etc. It even has a USB print server so I can now print from both the laptop and desktop. Only drawback, is it is still on-site. I still made DVD backups as well until blu-ray gets cheaper. Advantage, is it is always on-line. I have also set it up to e-mail me when it has problems.

For the record, Harold, I suspect that the upload speed you experiences is due not so much to limitations of the online storage service but rather the limitations of your ISP. Almost all ISPs place a much lower cap on their customers' upstream (upload) speed than on their downstream (download) speed.

Much, much lower. For example, my ISP advertises "up to" 7Mb/sec for downstream, but less than 1Mb/sec for upstream. (Actually, they don't even advertise the upstream since they don't expect anyone to really care. But when I test it, it's under 1Mb/sec.) ISPs simply don't expect their customers to send out as much data as they receive (or need to send it as fast).

Conversely, the online storage services know that you want to be able to send about the same amount of data that you plan to receive. They're not going to place such severe restrictions -- but you're still limited by what your ISP gives you.

The end result is twofold: 1) You could switch online storage services, but you're not going to see much difference unless you find an ISP that gives you a higher upstream speed; and 2) know that when you actually need to retrieve your files from that storage, the speed is probably going to be much quicker. How much quicker, I don't know -- it varies very widely between ISPs, not to mention connection methods. And you haven't mentioned either.

Rob

A 1 MB/s upstream speed is more than most ISPs commonly allow the average user these days. I agree with you that this is the bottleneck. The solution is to contact your ISP and get one of those business or enterprise class accounts with a higher upstream speed. By the time you pay extra for that service and factor in the online storage cost, you are better off buying a new PC for your network, with a RAID5 array.

Upstream speed is still quite low in most cases. I have a commercial cable account and my upstream is still limited to about 380Kbsp. In order to get 1.5Mbps i'd have to pay $300/month, and to get 2.5Mbps i'd have to pay about $420/month.

Ahhhh, for FIOS to be available. *sigh* Projected availability in my area is sometime after 2059. On the other hand a broadband wifi provider is supposed to be setting my area up with 5Mbps/5Mbps service sometime this year. I'll jump on that the day it's available.

Yeah, I'm on Road Runner here in Central Florida -- I think the max upstream is 768kbps, but I'm lucky if I ever get past 500kpbs. When I was on DSL, I think the max upstream was 256kbps.

Rob

Commercial DSL offers as much as 3Mbps upstream if you live close enough to a CO, and this at a fairly modest cost (just over $100/mo from Verizon in L.A. if I remember correctly).

Microsoft's Windows Live has had a lot of uptime trouble reported, I would not trust my stuff with them, especially when there are so many good alternatives.

I have been using MozyPro for online backup for a few years now, have two full 20GB accounts, one for my Windows workstation and one for my Mac, pay about $20/month for each.

Before that, I used Iron Mountain Connected Online Backup, which had an even better design of the UI, but it was getting expensive.

Thanks, I wasn't thinking about upload speeds and of course I should have been. I have a large SD Box that I keep negatives in that I could place a couple of external drives into. I might continue with Carbonite for personal files but place customer files onto externals.

I was thinking about using Skydrive to exchange data files with my friend in Texas.

A recent survey determined that Americans were more interested in higher capability broadband access than they are in HDTV.

The US ranked 24th in the world for broadband speed.

I wish we could catch up to South Korea !

Is the upstream speed really such a problem though. So long as the you can uplaod data faster than you create it on average then all should be doable. Shift your data for backup to a NAS and an agent on either in the NAS or on some old PC running Linux uploads it the offsite server.
So long as say over week or month you're aggregated upload rate is faster than your aggregated data creation you're sweet. The only dnager is your backups will be behind so in theory worst case you could loose say one weeks worth of work.
Years ago I used to shift for the the time large amounts of data over very slow links using Kermit. I might have to wait days but it got there.

Bob.

The largest pain is the initial uploads. However, like I said that amounts to 400 days of uploads! During that 400 days I am creating new content as well. My system could crash long before my stuff is backed up. Plus, Carbonite only backs up internal drives. It doesn't see external drives.

Just a note I found a place for about $150. for three years which gives me 1.5TB storage and transfer, Thats only $50. a year. I have two accounts with them for my web sites. If you have the speed its a great deal. Check out startlogic.com I have a ftp site set up with them so the college can download my shows and air them.

You know, with the price of outboard storage these days, I don't know what the debate is about. With external drives currently at $200/TB, you can stick one in your closet and let your grandchildren discover it two generations into the future. IOW, there's no expiration date and virtually no possibility of volatility or compromise ...

I just don't get why storing your own laundry in someone else's closet creates such an obsession ...

"you can stick one in your closet and let your grandchildren discover it two generations into the future."

Hard disk storage space is a fantastic bargain these days, but I have no faith in any one hard drive, stuck in a closet,or not, as a viable long-term storage medium.

I would expect an on-line storage facility to be providing redundancy, and professional best practices as a major reason for paying their higher prices. If the data really, truly has enduring value to you - save it multiple times, multiple places, multiple ways and cheerfully pay for your peace of mind. Don't forget about tape storage as an option.

Digital data isn't truly backed up unless it exists in at least two different forms in two different places.

Carbonite is currently $50/year for unlimited storage space so that price for off site, backed up & secure data is a very good value and one that easily guarantees peace of mind. Most people just do not backup often enough and probably very few store it away from the home/office. I have at least 7 external drives that I use for primary as well as backups. The problem is that I bought them over the years so some are 250gig.

Iron Mountain's Connected Online Backup backs up your data to two separate geographical locations simultaneously, and has the best UI of all backup services.

A bit pricier than the rest though.

I faced a similar problem backup up our small business's graphics file server (about 500Gig). Here's how I did it.
I bought two Linksys routers that do VPN. Created an VPN over the Internet. You'll need a static IP address or dynamic DNS service like one from dyndns.org

I then use Acronis True Image as the backup software. You can adjust the compression and what it backs. Choose from entire hard drive image backup to folders to individual files.

As other mentioned, the initial backup is the killer. So I use external hard drives. The initial backup I do locally connected right to the computer I'm backing up. Then I connect the external hard drive remotely across the VPN and change a few settings in Acronis True Image so that it doesn't look locally, but now through the VPN to add incremental backups.

Here's another way to do it. Install a laptop in your car. (Oh did I mention I'm a radical geek?) I'm thinking under the rear deck in the trunk. Buy a cigarette lighter adapter and hard wire the leads into constant 12v power. Do the backups wirelessly assuming the laptop is in wireless range of your home WiFi. I'd go wireless-N to get decent distance and speed.

You need DNS for a VPN? Strange. I've set up dozens of VPNs and most of them were IP address to IP address. Then again, i'm usually playing with $20K+ Cisco and NetBridge routers rather than the little $50 home units.

I said you'd need "static" IPs or a Dynamic DNS type service. I'm not sure how you configured your Cisco's to find each other with dynamic IPs without a dynamic DNS type service. If you're dealing with Cisco routers, I'm guessing you're dealing with more commercial environment and static IPs not a home to home or home to business. Apologies if I didn't convey that.

Just to follow-up....I now have 43 gig saved off to Carbonite (17 days). Been running around the clock to accomplish this. I think I will pause the upload tonight and give the old drives a break.

Backing up 43 gig in 17 days? Congratulations, I believe that you have finally found a longer route to India.