LaCie announced it's teaming with backup provider Carbonite to offer the company's online backup solution free for one year to customers purchasing its external drive products. The Carbonite service, a fifty-dollar value, runs an application on the user's computer that keeps track of updated files. The app waits until the computer is idle, so not as to impede performance, then encrypts and sends the backup to Carbonite's servers. The company's set no limit as to how much data can be stored with the service, though the required software is only available for XP and Vista users.
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Non-LaCie customers can still sign up for the Carbonite program, one of many online-backup services available, sometimes referred to as "cloud storage". These companies offer different hosting plans, some using a flat rate for unlimited backup like Carbonite, while others like IDrive put an upper limit (150GB, in this case) on backup size, with overage charges for exceeding it. Amazon offers a similar service, but optimized for commercial storage solutions, not providing a slick PC interface or auto-backup scheduler. Commercial services like Amazon's Simple Storage Service often bill per gigabyte and charge extra for bandwidth use. Mac users have the option to store files through a MobileMe subscription, starting with 20GB of storage. There are also several free services available, though often heavily limited in their backup capacity. Windows Live SkyDrive can store up to 5GB, and IDrive offers a free account with a 2GB limit.

These backup options, though more expensive than local drives like LaCie's, offer users the peace of mind of having an off-site backup. An external hard disk works fine as redundancy against mechanical drive failure, but can't protect data from fire or theft if it's sitting there, right next to the computer. Does anyone have any backup horror/saves-the-day stories they'd like to share in the comments below?

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