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Do you want to back up your data ? I can help you with that. If you have some important data in your computer like documents, photos, music and videos etc.. you should back up these data regularly to avoid data loss due to hardware failure and system failure.. External storage device is an option to back up your data but you will have to spend some money for that. I can suggest some good free alternatives to that.. even if you have external drive you should back up your data at some online secure site so you can assess your data anywhere.
My First choice in this category is WINDOWS LIVE SKYDRIVE. It provides 25 gb free space for online storage of your Media files and documents. You can sign up for Skydrive at www.skydrive.live.com. You can also access your Skydrive storage from your computer using SKYDRIVE EXPLORER. For detailed information regarding Skydrive explorer please visit http://skydriveexplorer.com/.
My Second choice in this category is IDRIVE (www.idrive.com/). It offers 2 gb free space. but after creating an account and simply referring idrive to your contacts you can get 10 gb extra free space. So you will get total 12 gb free space. It also offers free desktop client as well as explorer plugin so you can view your online storage right from your desktop.
My Third choice in this category is ADRIVE (www.adrive.com/). It offers 50gb free space!! It does not provide desktop client in free account any more, but you can assess and upload your files through your internet browser. Another good option is MOZY (http://mozy.com/). It also offers 2 gb free space. again you can expand your free space by referring it to your friends( 512 mb per one contact.). It also provides free desktop client. HUMYO (http://humyo.com/) is another alternative for backing up your data. It offers 10 gb free space. 5 gb for your documents and 5 gb for your media files. They provide desktop client only for limited period of time in free account but still you can upload and assess your data using their site for free. OPENDRIVE (https://www.opendrive.com/login.php) is also a good option for online back up. they provide 5 gb free storage. They provide desktop client for free but you can upload only 50mb/day using their desktop client in free account.
Here are few more options suggested by site visitors. DROPBOX (www.getdropbox.com/) provides 2 gb free space for backing up and sharing your files. Dropbox will work similar to any other folder of your computer. Simply install dropbox, drag and drop files/folders to Dropbox, you want to backup, share or sync with other computer. MYOTHERDRIVE (www.myotherdrive.com/) is one more option which provides 2 gb free space. It also provides free desktop client. SYNCPLICITY (www.syncplicity.com/) is yet another option for online backup. It provides 2 gb free space and you can add 1 gb of free space per referral up to 3 gb so that way you can get 5 gb free space with it. You will also get free desktop client.
All of the above sites are good options for your data back up. depending upon your needs you can select any of above. if you want unlimited online storage you can upgrade your account. For more information click on the links and visit their sites, you will get more idea there. you will have to sign up to get your free space in all of the above sites. but you will not need to give your credit card information in any of above sites. your name , E mail address and username that's all they need. so start backing up your data.. Enjoy..
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I like the free versions of both MozyHome (2 GB) and MS Live Mesh (5 GB). Rather than having to manually upload files or folders, you simply right-click on a folder and click on the option "Add to MozyHome" or "Add to Live Mesh". The folder and its files are them automatically uploaded to the provider's site. And the really nice thing is that whenever you change a file, the latest version is saved. Many/most of the other services require that you manually upload files again whenever you change them - a real pain and a considerable detriment when backing up important (changing) files. OK for one-time upload of things like photos however, which generally are not updated over time.
Regards..........Toby Avery
It's simply a good listing.
Idrive is recommended above with the note that if you refer it to friends you get another 10 gig free.
True, but the service wants every address in your address box and that's a bit rich.
But thanks for the rundown Keyur. Appreciate it.
http://www.willemijns.com/backup.htm list all of them ;)
Very nice site!
Experience shows me it is not safe to rely entirely on just one in-the-clouds data storage no matter how safe you work it out to be. Here is a case where it seems data engineers corrupted the database making much of customer data lost or irretrievable. Just read here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/mediamaxthelinkup-closes-its-doors/. The original service, which seemed sound, went through 4 company changes but that hardly seems to matter when data engineering errors at the latter end corrupted things. No-one seems to be able to explain why cyclical backups weren't available to restore data.
I recommend playing it safe - have several backups, 2 on-site and 2 different off-site, and some of these multi-generational so corruptions are not replicated.
Another category where to stick to "free" is to be penny-wise and pound foolish. Unless you use it only for non-critical data. Which in my case anyway, directly contradicts the most compelling reasons for backup.
I have been researching this for a short while myself, and so far most of the positives point to Mozy, which someone has already mentioned. I haven't used it yet, because frankly I don't want to trust only their encryption algorithm, and am looking at the best way to encrypt data first on my end, but that's the finalist in my own research so far.
It is pathetically slooooooow. I have used it in the past for around six months. It is always very slow. It is not worth the $60. p/year (at $5. p/mth) or for that matter, it would not be worth it if it offered an unlimited amount of storage for Free. It is just a waste of time and money better spent elsewhere. I highly recommend ADrive.com for 50GB and did I mention it is free!
Check with your ISP. Most offer this service as part of the internet service you already pay for. I use Cox and after initial setup I do nothing. As long as I am online, selected folders in my system sync with my online storage space. I get a warning message if my system is unable to sync which is when I am not connected. Otherwise I forget about it until I need to access a file. I get 5gb with my account, but can upgrade to 25gb. They don't guarantee against data loss, but I trust them to keep my data safe more than I would most other .com's.
Lisa
Just be aware that some of these free storage sites have been known to disappear without trace, Oosah.com and MyBloop.com spring to mind.
MyBloop.com vanished taking around 300 of my mp3's with it. Oosah.com offered 1TB of free storage and then went the same way. Free online storage is fine if you want to access your files from anywhere, but don't just trust these people to keep your precious files stored online forever .. even the paid for ones. By all means use these websites to store your files, only make sure you have them backed up to disc, flash drives or whatever as a fail safe.
Personal data is hard to replace once lost, photographs are gone forever, just try to access Oosah.com or MyBloop.com to see what I mean. It may be boring to do but by backing up to disc at least you'll still have your files should the storage site go the same way as the two I've mentioned.
Just a word of caution from someone with first hand experience of losing files on free online storage sites .. and there are many more out there.
I am having a hard time believing that no one has mentioned Mozy?! I've been using Mozy for over 2 years and absolutely love it.
If you want to backup your files online, Mozy is one of the best ways to go.
www.mozy.com
In 3rd para, 3rd line, it reads "Another good option is mozy (mozy.com/). it also offers 2 gb free space..." (Last Update: Wed, 08/05/2009 - 17:37)
If you're after a free sync tool... check out Live Mesh
I'd like to recommend an awesome free sync tool by Microsoft called Live Mesh - http://www.mesh.com
Best of all it's FREE! It allows you to sync files between different PCs and even your Mobile devices.
I use it to sync files between my work and home PCs. It replaces the need for using USB Flash sticks :)
Also, the other great thing about Live Mesh is you can access your Sync'd files from any computer on the internet and you don't need to install any software. All you need is your Live ID login and you'll have access to your files anywhere as they exist in a secure part of the internet via you Live ID.
I recommend you give it a go - http://www.mesh.com
The best I've come across is http;//g.ho.st which offers 15 GBs of storage space and FTP support.
free unlimited Binfire http://www.binfire.com/rc6/index.php?
now 10 GB
Here's another idea...
Backup your data using a peer-peer network of your friend's hard drive space. Take a look at their FAQ... http://zoogmo.com/zoogmo-faq.html
In summary, it's free, you have a desktop agent, your data is AES encrypted on the host drives and basically you have as much room as your peers are willing to grant you on their drives.
I thought it was very clever... I'm trying it out now. ;-)
*Whole different set of considerations though since your friends are hosting your data... if they decide to 'format' you'd loose your repository... but hopefully they would get setup again and your agent would just re-populate their drive shortly.
www.zoogmo.com
Good idea. Rather than a friend's hard drive it can be used to back up to another computer (I have a few). Never thought of it before.
Any services that provide accounts with FTP, SFTP or comes with a software that assigns the drive space a drive letter, like X: which you can access with any program through the filesystem?
Mozy sort of does this - it appears (in Windows) as a drive under My Computer and you can then browse it.
Mozy also only does incremental backups - it will upload just the changed portion of large files so makes it quite efficient.
I'm looking to backup my iTunes (and other documents, pictures etc.) online, I don't trust DVDs anymore. I have 20GB between music and videos in iTunes so I think adrive is the only option. But is this free service good? If I upload my files, does that mean it would be possible to re-download them, say if my computer failed and I got a new one, is it possible to download the uploaded files to new computer (or in fact any computer?) and the files still in tact and not damaged? Is online backup a secure place to backup my files for free? Or should I pay (I prefer not to) for an external hard drive?
First of all, it depends on how important those music and videos are to you. If you can't live without them, then spend the money, at least you won't regret it later.
Next are the legal issues. I'm sure you know what I mean by that.
After that, your bandwidth. Unless your ISP provides unlimited downloading and uploading, expect higher bills. Also, if your download/upload speed is slow, then it'll take forever to backup and restore your files. That'll mean even more bills (electric bills to be exact). In addition to that, the whole process can be ruined if your connection breaks.
Last is how much you trust these free services. An online look-up of their reputation, statistics, and other useful info may help.
My personal experience
I did try A-drive on 2 separate computers and it worked fine, but these free online backup site aren't guaranteed to work forever.
When it comes to backing up data, everything has a plus/minus to it.
External HDs are relatively inexpensive, come in large sizes if needed and can be accessed only by you..
However, externals can break down, as my almost full 1TB external did (which was unrecoverable).
Yes ADrive can do all the things you want with the free account. I use ADrive and have not had any issues. I like the folder upload option as many of these only allow file uploads. Their speeds on up/download are decent.
JL has already pointed the issues with this, but I will also emphasize the reliability of these sites as they are prone to come and go. One of the sites I originally used went under and all that I had uploaded was lost. Hard to say whether these sites will stay solvent, but an important thing to note is how long they have been in existence. Generally, the longer the better. Some of the better known premium sites are more likely to stay in existence, but their cost makes buying externals seem reasonable.
It is best to store your important data at several sites or site and external/DVD.
I also suggest password zipping and/or encrypting all your uploads to these sites. Many of the sites retain the right to examine your uploads for copyright violation, inappropriate content etc. and it is just a good practice to protect your data from prying eyes at online sites.
does any of those free services have the option to download them with download manager?
These are great and useful sites. I signed up for most of them for free and I am enjoying them very much.
I personally like ElephantDrive a lot. I also discovered they have the best user reviews. Here's a good example:
http://www.onlinebackupsites.com
I'm surprised no one brought up the issue of re-syncing large files online such as an Outlook PST database. With most services you will be forced to resend he entire PST file every time it changes (even by one byte). With Jungledisk (and its JD Plus service) you select the "only upload changes" option and it works like RSync. I can make a change to my Outlook.pst and have it re-uploaded to S3 in seconds. And my main PST is over 1GB! This applies to all large files, not just Outlooks database.
OK, Jungledisk isn't free, but still worth considering!!
yo dude none of these websites help me, man.
I have found that online backup services are a very good second string to backing up data, especially for incremental backup. However I believe you get what you pay or don't pay for! I can't help feeling that these services are provided mainly for business and commercial use. A limited free service may be provided at first for private use, to get custom, but my experience so far has been that this free subscription has been withdrawn and in one case without sufficient warning and I lost my backed up data.
I am sure that this may not happen with most of those recommended in this article, but it is a warning.
Hi there!
I am surprised there is no a sinle word about
http://4shared.com/
- PC World Rating: 93 Superior
- 5GB of free space
- desktop uploader
- and most important: Site has online search option, so you can find a bunch of "free" files (software, e-books, multimedia, ...) that users put inside their "shared" folders
Believe me it is worth to try!
Best regards,
DAma
Thanks for sharing this information with the site. I will try this one when I will get time. It seems like in free account file download and file sharing is full of ads. Every comment and suggestions are welcome here. those always help me. thanks again.
Regards,
Keyur
I like Box.net quite a bit. I've also used SugarSync, its been reliable.
Box.net has a handy java based drag and drop upload.
www.box.net
www.sugarsync.com
Wuala
http://www.wuala.com/
(I'm leery of their privacy policy)
Dropbox:
getdropbox.com
(I couldn't get it to sync - apparently not an uncommon problem but may be fixed in future releases)
drop.io
http://drop.io/
I use amazon S3 in conjunction with the Cloudberry interface:
aws.amazon.com/s3
Cloudberry:
http://www.cloudberrylab.com/
Jungledisk is good, they have free and paid versions:
http://www.jungledisk.com/
(I believe Rackspace bought jungledisk some time ago, I don't know what that's going to do with where storage ends up)
There's a pretty good free online storage feature-by-feature comparison chart here:
http://lifehacker.com/5064688/online-storage-feature+by+feature-comparis...
Some others:
Microsoft Live Mesh (5GB free)
www.mesh.com
Microsoft Skydrive (25GB free)
http://skydrive.live.com/
(I couldn't get Mesh to work on Vista, and, with Skydrive, if you want to drag and drop files, you have to use Internet Explorer. Good idea to read the fine print with both. Actually, on all of them - blogging service JournalSpace tanked and took everyone's data with them.)
Try SOS Online backup. Though a bit pricy, with the features it has, I think it's worth it. Some of the reasons I prefer it over Mozy and Carbonite, are its ability to backup from as many computers that I want using just one account. I don;t have to get a 2nd or a 3rd account if I have to backup from another machine. Also the unlimited versions that it keeps and accessing & sharing my backup from anywhere using a browesr is simply fab!I wouldn;t trsut a free backup account. So many of them are closing and it's important we are not tempted by free offers and compromise our data.
Rob
thanks that really helped me a lot, i was searching for the online backup with desktop client. Thanks
You are welcome and thanks for the complement. That's what this site is for... to help people to choose right option.
techpp.com/2009/02/27/top-10-websites-to-take-online-backup-data-free/ Some of them haven't been mentioned here, particularly orbitfiles.com which sounds good!
ADrive - "it also provides desktop client so you can access and upload your files from your desktop." Free version does not, you can use it only in internet browser.
Mike
This is because they have recently changed this.. it was available in free account as well, now it's only available in premium account. thanks for the update.
this is a very good category - online storage is a maze.
however, unless this is reviewed & updated at least on 4months basis, the information will become obsolete!
the landscape of consumer's online storage tools is changing way too quickly.
thanks for everyone adding their opinion, they usually are as informative as tech-supp-alert's posts themselves!
http://www.qwest.com/residential/products/digitalvault/index.html It also offers free 2gb of space.
Someone help me i cant decide! How do you decide. Which one is the best for me-someone who just wants to backup my itunes music and pictures. I was going to try Adrive because of the space it offers but then someone posted about syncplicity which seems even better. What should I go for?
Hi
Well, It depends upon what works for you.. You can read comments there are so many options similar to idrive and mozy which provide 2 gb free space.. idrive works for me. syncplicity looks good, too.. Still I need to try few more options suggested by site visitors. I recommend you to also look for comments, that might help you, too...
http://www.myotherdrive.com/ is it good? I havent tried it, but cant decide on which online backup to use!
Dropbox - No comments!!! https://www.getdropbox.com/
livedrive sucks now. it is free now. and i cannot delete the client software from my computer completely: there is still something in my control panel.
Hi,
I'm looking for some software for syncing my hard drive with a server. I have my own server account with unlimited space so not looking for an online backup site as such.
Thanks
CrashPlan: http://www.crashplan.com/
Basic client is free, basic destination is free, $60 for more enhanced client with backups as files change, VSS open files support and more. They also have a server product which will scale to supporting thousands of users starting at $350 for 5 clients, server is free...they host storage at $0.10/gig with discounts for yearly and yearly+client purchases.
Some things that make it interesting (+ version):
Peer-to-peer (client to client) backups
Local backups, with ability to use local backup as a seed for remote site
(Backup 1 TB locally, take it to your server, mount, go home, send updates)
Good de-duping/block level updates and compression of data
As modified backups, files backup as they get updated
Intelligent transfer queue queues up files prioritizing latest updated items first, followed by smaller -> larger files
--Not affiliated with the company, just a user that uses it to backup locally and to my Linux colo box...
http://spideroak.com should have been on the list! Multiple platform support for Windows, Linux and Mac - Excellent security, Free 2GB, Secure webshare and much more!
http://spideroal.com
SpiderOak looks like it'll be promising in the future if they can maintain their servers. They release clients pretty quickly with new features and will be adding Windows service support soon I hear. Offers some unique features like syncing, intelligent merging, public shares, and de-duping data ACROSS MACHINES, so if you backup your favorite DVD that's the same on your home, work and laptop machines, it takes a LOT less space. Client can feel a little slow at times processing/uploading data but it shows some promise.
Has anybody tried Online Storage Solutions at http://www.onlinestoragesolution.com/index.old.html ?
They are practically free - 10$ a year for unlimited storage. It sounds to good to be true.
Bengt S
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