Online storage backup for Uni Student?

[ihaveaproblem]

My sister is soon to leave for Uni.

I've advised her that she should create backups of any work she saves on her laptop. I was thinking she could use an external hard drive to back it up, but was also wondering if there’s any good online backup solutions (Preferably free or not to expensive) for her to back work up.

 

Thanks

 

EDIT

 

I was leaving in a dream world when I said free^^ As cheap as possible though.

Edited September 18, 2011 by ihaveaproblem

[glennda]

depending on how much dropbox is free although never used it!

[ihaveaproblem]

depending on how much dropbox is free although never used it!

 

Thanks, will take a look.

To be honest I've got no idea how much work she will have to backup and how much storage space she would need. She is doing law so I guess most of it will be word documents, so shouldn’t need a great deal of space.

[witch]

Thanks, will take a look.

To be honest I've got no idea how much work she will have to backup and how much storage space she would need. She is doing law so I guess most of it will be word documents, so shouldn’t need a great deal of space.

 

Dropbox gives 2GB free I think

[Devontechie]

Dropbox gives 2GB free I think

yeah it is unless you use an invite from someone else, then you get an extra 250mb. If you then invite people you get an extra 250mb per invite that accepts

[ihaveaproblem]

yeah it is unless you use an invite from someone else, then you get an extra 250mb. If you then invite people you get an extra 250mb per invite that accepts

 

That’s not so bad. If she invites all the family and her friends she can quite easily get more space. I'm going to download it now and take a look.

Anyone know how reliable and how easy it is to use?

[Arthur]

Your best bet would be either CrashPlan or BackBlaze. Both offer unlimited storage and are much cheaper than Dropbox. They are also proper backup applications.

 

By default, BackBlaze backs up almost everything on the computer which should give your sister peace of mind when it comes to restoring data.

[Arthur]

Anyone know how reliable and how easy it is to use?

Reliability is very good (Dropbox uses Amazon's S3 service) and it's extremely simple to use. However, if she doesn't put the files in her Dropbox folder they won't get backed up.

 

I can't imagine she would be pleased if the laptop gets stolen or the hard drive dies, only to find that the important document she was working on was saved to her Documents folder by mistake.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Arthur

[tom_newton]

Your best bet would be either CrashPlan or BackBlaze. Both offer unlimited storage and are much cheaper than Dropbox. They are also proper backup applications.

 

By default, BackBlaze backs up almost everything on the computer which should give your sister peace of mind when it comes to restoring data.

 

Never used either, but I use Mozy which is similar to backblaze. These sort of services are EXACTLY what's needed, as there are some failure modes of other types of backup that could really screw you over

[ihaveaproblem]

Your best bet would be either CrashPlan or BackBlaze. Both offer unlimited storage and are much cheaper than Dropbox. They are also proper backup applications.

 

By default, BackBlaze backs up almost everything on the computer which should give your sister peace of mind when it comes to restoring data.

 

These look good as well.

I think for the start I’ll set up drop box and see how it goes. If she does need massive amounts of storage space then we can look at purchasing one of the products you suggested.

I will set drop box up on her laptop to sync the entire documents folder and tell if she has any non-important items, such as music etc. to put them in different locations.

If anyone is in need of an account and would like to help her, and yourself by getting an extra 250mb please join and install using this link

http://db.tt/5rYSe9g

[witch]

domino and vikpaw have info about dropbox in their sigs so it is a safe bet that they are the ones to talk to for more info

[ihaveaproblem]

domino and vikpaw have info about dropbox in their sigs so it is a safe bet that they are the ones to talk to for more info

 

Thanks:)

It seems fairly easy to use even for my sister. It's set so the drop box folder is in her documents and I've told her to save all important files that she wouldn’t want to lose into that folder.

And she already has around an extra 2 GB of storage from inviting her friends^^

[kmok]

Once she is at uni and has her uni email she will be able to use dropbox.com/edu this will add 500mb for any referrals she gets instead of 250mb. Even though it says .edu you can use .ac.uk ones as well.