[RTC List] On-Line back-up/storage services

[Sean Ennis, ScanDoc]

I agree with Chris that most folks should also maintain a local full 
backup, which is cheap and easy with external hard drives these days.

I will add this:
If you are in the market for an external hard drive for backups, 
avoid the prepackaged drive in an enclosure. Instead purchase a high 
quality OEM bare drive, and enclosure separately.
It will cost a little bit more, but you will have a full 3 year 
warranty on the drive instead of a 1 year warranty.

In most cases with a prepackaged external drive, if you open the 
enclosure to do anything with the bare drive, the warranty is void on 
both the enclosure and the drive itself.  You might have to break the 
enclosure to get inside, as they are often welded shut.

I'm using a Western Digital SATA drive with a Vantec enclosure that 
has USB 2.0 and eSATA (3 Gbps!!) interfaces. This setup was not much 
more expensive than the "pre-enclosed" drives and has worked 
flawlessly on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

While you can shop online and assemble the parts yourself, I know 
that Renaissance will set one up for you, so you get the "plug and 
play" advantage, but still get the 3 year warranty.

At 03:12 PM 6/23/2008, you wrote:
>Finally, consider getting either a network hard drive or a 
>peripheral hard drive to back-up your whole system in addition to 
>the online back-up. The benefit of remote back-up is that if there 
>is an earthquake, flood or fire, your data is still protected ... 
>but you'll pay a lot more if you're backing up your whole system. 
>All you really need off site are your files.