This is a guest post by Gavin CROSS. I would like to start by thanking Gavin for the great contribution.

As we move further into the digital age, the preferred medium for storing data is becoming online services. Rather than a physical hard drive kept in your home or office backing up the hard drives you are using for the actual computers you work on, more and more storage is being done through online backup services. There are those who say the future is in the Cloud, but for now at least, we’re still relying on someone else’s physical hard drives kept offsite. Here are a few of the online backup services available:

1. Google Drive

In order to use Google Drive, you have to install it on every computer or device you wish to access your files from. If you have Google Drive on your device and it’s synced up with your Google account, you can easily access any files in the drive from any device with Google Drive installed. The first 5GB of storage are free, but you want it for hard drive backup, which gives the option of $2.49 per month (or just under $30 per year) for 25GB. It’s not the biggest storage size, but if you want to backup files at multiple locations and aren’t too worried about space, Google Drive might be right for you.

2. Carbonite

Carbonite is a well-established player in the online backup industry, with 200 million more files backed up through their service every day. Carbonite offers “unlimited” storage for $59 per year, although like most uses of the word “unlimited” in marketing, there are some limits. You can only back up one machine per subscription; every additional machine is another $59 per year. And after you’ve stored 35GB the upload speed drops considerably, from 2MB/sec to 512kbps– a quarter of the speed. Once you’ve passed 200GB of storage it’s cut down again, to 100kbps. That’s barely faster than dial-up. You can keep the 2MB/sec speed up to 200GB of storage by springing for one of the premium versions, the two of which are $99 and $149 respectively.

3. SOS Online Backup Home Edition
SOS Online Backup Home Edition is $75 per year for a two-year plan that covers up to five different computers and 100GB of storage. It also has a less costly plan available ($9.95 per month) for 50GB of storage. SOS Online Backup Home Edition’s user interface is also much more user friendly than some of the other services can be. It offers encrypted storage right off the bat, too. Not even SOS employees will be able to access <i>those</i> files. It also has a much faster connection speed than Carbonite for uploading files, and includes options for local backups, unlike Google Drive.

With so much of your life online, you don’t want to take any chances when it comes to backing up your work. Fortunately, online backup services are plentiful, targeted for different people with different needs. Whether you have a satellite, cable or broadband DSL connection, make sure your personal information is not only safe, but saved.   Keep an eye out for features like automated backup (MiMedia), the ability to sync online storage (SpiderOak) and the option to mix coverage for both PCs and Macs.