free backup cloud services?

In my opinion, the speed, credibility, and reliability of a USB drive cannot be beaten. There's nothing like something where you can pull the plug and put it into your pocket or into a safe.

"Cloud" is a stupid marketing gag that surprisingly many people seem urged to follow, but it's really just that... stupid.

Say you have a typical DSL internet access (which is asynchronous). This will let you upload something around 100 kiB/s (or less). Now try and make a 10 GiB initial backup, that's 1 day 4 hours, assuming you do nothing else at all. Say you have a 100 or so megabytes of modified data every day, which isn't an awful lot. The backup software might compress it down to 50 megabytes, but this still saturates your line 100% for around 8 minutes.

And then, you don't even own the data -- you're at the mercy of some company who might give you access or might not. Or who might be sold (including all servers and all data on them) or go bankrupt next week, or have the passwords of a hundred thousand users (including yours) compromised. Which of course never happens to any serious company, except the 3-4 cases every year that you get to read about.

I use CrashPlan (Plus, which isn't free). They've got a free version that lets you back up to a local drive or to another computer. The Plus version just lets you back up to their cloud storage. You can compare some file hosting services, some of which auto-sync with you computer in place of a full backup solution.

In my opinion, the speed, credibility, and reliability of a USB drive cannot be beaten. There's nothing like something where you can pull the plug and put it into your pocket or into a safe.

"Cloud" is a stupid marketing gag that surprisingly many people seem urged to follow, but it's really just that... stupid.

It's not that stupid. It can be stupidly applied, but having my data back up to multiple servers on the cloud distributed across the globe is nice reliability. What if someone uses an external drive as their backup and wisely stores it in a fireproof safe, but there's a flood that completely wipes out their home? Good bye data. Or what if something happens while they're backing up and their backup drive and their computer are destroyed or stolen? Good bye data. Data redundancy with geographical distribution is what really makes "cloud" storage desirable.

Say you have a typical DSL internet access (which is asynchronous). This will let you upload something around 100 kiB/s (or less). Now try and make a 10 GiB initial backup, that's 1 day 4 hours, assuming you do nothing else at all. Say you have a 100 or so megabytes of modified data every day, which isn't an awful lot. The backup software might compress it down to 50 megabytes, but this still saturates your line 100% for around 8 minutes.

If that's your connection speed, then sure, the cloud probably isn't for you. But I've got an upload speed of about 6 Mbps, which means I can upload about 21 gigabytes during the night when no one is using the network anyway.

And then, you don't even own the data

Uhh... yeah you do.

you're at the mercy of some company who might give you access or might not.

Chances are you've signed some kind of contract with them, in which case they are likely required to give you access. Sure, things like network issues can temporarily prevent access, but it's not like the company can throw a temper tantrum and refuse to give you access anymore.

Or who might be sold (including all servers and all data on them) or go bankrupt next week, or have the passwords of a hundred thousand users (including yours) compromised. Which of course never happens to any serious company, except the 3-4 cases every year that you get to read about.

These are real possibilities, and should be considered.

Here's how I do it: the main computers in the house back up with CrashPlan+. One of these computers is a Linux server that acts as by git home server. I work on my laptops, push my code home to my home server, and it gets backed up during the night to CrashPlan. It's nice because I have a local server to act as my git server, but I also get cloud storage in case that computer ever dies. Plus it's all automatic, so I don't even have to think about it.

Most of the work I do with non-code files already happens on the cloud with Google Docs or Lucid Chart. Pictures and media files get put onto one of the home machines and backed up with CrashPlan, as well as any documents my parents have saved.

I am aware of the risks. But i will make other backups too, just not that regularly seems to be the case. It is just nice to have your most important data somewhere stored on the web where you can always access it. If it gets lost then bummer, maximum a months worth of work gone but thats better then having nothing.

99% of the nights i have my PC running, most of the times not even doing something so i could just as well use this time to upload some of my work.

I just need to backup some maps, like all my web projects and the current programs i am working on. So no need to backup my whole disk. Some extra GB's are welcome so i can backup my photo's and art on the cloud server too.

Google Cloud gives u 5 gigs free. It works like DropBox, it uses a small client which syncs whatever you put in a particular folder. It might meet your needs.