Rattle wrote:

We believe:

* You shouldn't have to think about backup. Backup should be set up once, and then work automatically.

* Your files should be encrypted. Your backup files should be encrypted and stored in a secure, remote location that's only accessible to you — from anywhere.

* Your backups should be smart. Your backup system should be smart enough to only back up data that's not already been backed up, only back up parts of a file that have changed, and be able to back up open and locked files.

I'm trying out this service. It's free up to 2G, and only $4.95 a month for unlimited. Sounds too good to be true. I'll be sure to post my experiences with it.

I tried it a couple months ago. The Mac client wasn't quite up to snuff at the time, but it's promising and, as you say, the price is right.

I'm most curious, at present, about CrashPlan. The concept is that you put a USB drive at your friend's place and back up to that (or any free disk space your friend has and makes available). If they subscribe too, they can store their backups on your free space. I like the idea that the physical media is recoverable, and I don't have to be worried about the future existence of the company.

The big downside is that you can't do an initial local backup to the drive, and then continue incrementally after sending the drive(s) to your friend(s). I have something like 300GB to backup... i don't want to do it all over my cable modem. I -- and probably a lot of other people -- emailed them asking for that feature and it's on their official TODO list now, so, fingers crossed.

Mozy has this problem as well. They claim 2-3GB/day upload on average. This means my *initial* upload would take 100-150 days. That's assuming that speed could be sustained (doubtful) and that my provider wouldn't red-flag me and get nasty (extremely doubtful).

Clearly, they aren't targeting me, but nonetheless, the utility diminishes.

RE: Mozy Online Backup: Simple, Automatic, Secure