Best automated offsite backup service?

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm looking for an automated, offsite backup service that offers a "seed" service where they send you a drive that you can fill up and send back initially, then incrementally add to that backup over time using a cloud-based service.

CrashPlan used to offer this, but they no longer do.

Is there anyone else? Given that I have 750 GB of photos that I want backed up, it would take >30 days to do it using the cloud-only services that don't offer the initial drive-based backup.

 

[simonsi]

I use 3 USB HDDs, One at home, one at the office (both backup daily via TM, then a third I swap over at 3mthly intervals with my daughter who lives the other side of the world.

Not quite what you were asking but achieves the same with no 3rd party service dependency. Just FYI...

 

[kenoh]

I use 3 USB HDDs, One at home, one at the office (both backup daily via TM, then a third I swap over at 3mthly intervals with my daughter who lives the other side of the world.

Not quite what you were asking but achieves the same with no 3rd party service dependency. Just FYI...

Wow, you take offsite to a whole new level don't you!?!?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I use 3 USB HDDs, One at home, one at the office (both backup daily via TM, then a third I swap over at 3mthly intervals with my daughter who lives the other side of the world.

Not quite what you were asking but achieves the same with no 3rd party service dependency. Just FYI...

Thanks. I do have two backup HDDs on my desk next to my iMac that I rotate back and forth between. I suppose I could take one of them to my office, and bring it home to update once a week or so. I'd much rather find an automated solution if one exists, but if this is what it takes I'm open to it.

 

[zhenya]

I would still recommend Crashplan. Their software is reliable, their pricing is reasonable, and their de-duplication and incremental change systems are as good as it gets. I've had ~30 computers backing up several TB of data to their service for several years now with no hiccups.

What does it matter if the initial seed takes 30 days? It just works in the background and slows down if other network traffic needs priority. That's how long my initial seed took at home but that was years ago now and I've never had to upload that much data again. Does your ISP offer a faster upload tier you could get on to, even if just for a month or so?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I would still recommend Crashplan. Their software is reliable, their pricing is reasonable, and their de-duplication and incremental change systems are as good as it gets. I've had ~30 computers backing up several TB of data to their service for several years now with no hiccups.

What does it matter if the initial seed takes 30 days? It just works in the background and slows down if other network traffic needs priority. That's how long my initial seed took at home but that was years ago now and I've never had to upload that much data again. Does your ISP offer a faster upload tier you could get on to, even if just for a month or so?

I'm on the fastest tier already. But your point is well-taken. Thanks.

 

[dimme]

I am happy with Crashplan, works in the background on my mini server, I also rotate a hard drive between home and work.

 

[vjaaan]

If I could ask a question of those of you who use external drives for backup, is it possible to use those drives for your Photos Library, whereby they will receive all newly taken photos (through Photo Stream I guess) to that external, when it is connected and Photos is running?

Thanks.

 

[glenthompson]

I use Crashplan on multiple computers. One holds my media files and took multiple months for the initial backup as I didn't want to exceed my ISP data limits. Updates now happen in real time.

 

[bgd]

My initial CrashPlan upload, bit over 1TB, took weeks but it was completely seamless, just ran in the background. I got quite interested in checking progress each evening.

And it's still seamless, just set it up and forget. Very pleased with it.