I need a better backup solution

[fancybone]

Currently, most of my stuff is backed up via Crashplan, and semi-duplicated between my work laptop and home desktop. But this doesn't really work very well for me, because Crashplan is of the opinion that each computer is a distinct entity and the files on them don't overlap. Dropbox seems to have a better approach that suits my needs, but I don't trust them and don't want to support them.

As a specific example of what I need, I have:
Digital Photos: 45 gig
Scanned Photos: 15 gig
Documents: 9 gig
Random images: 2 gig
Porn: 5 gig
Misc: 50 gig

I'd like to keep my documents and random images on my work laptop, and have the changes I make there synced up with everything else - if I update my resume, and then throw my work laptop into the river, I'd like to come home and boot up my desktop and have access to those recent changes. I don't want the 60 gigs of photos cluttering up the work laptop, but on occasion I'd like to be able to go through a few of those folders at work to find a specific photo - without having to sync the whole 60 gigabytes down. (Which is what Crashplan would require.)

Ideally, I'd have a server running something like OwnCloud.org, but I'm not sure if I want to pay out of pocket for a few hundred gigs of storage; plus, I'd have to sysadmin the whole thing, keep it secure, distribute it so that there's no single point of failure, etc.

Do y'all have any suggestions?

[Hephaestus]

You can get an enormous amount of free cloud storage provided you don't mind having accounts all over the place. Some of them offer really cheap large amounts of space. One I know of offers a TB for 2.50 a month.

[Impulser]

"but I don't trust them and don't want to support them"

Is there any particular reason as to why? Have you considered SkyDrive, GoogleDrive etc?

[Perdix]

I use an encrypted RAID setup to backup important data (bank access codes, passwords, important contacts)... but porn? Really?

I use these same hard drives that are in these:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-USB-Hard-...rn+digital+4tb

Just get an external hard drive, and then set up an automatic backup. Do not backup your stuff online, it's too easy to hack into cloud storage systems.

If your data is in your physical possession, it can't be stolen.

[fancybone]

You can get an enormous amount of free cloud storage provided you don't mind having accounts all over the place. Some of them offer really cheap large amounts of space. One I know of offers a TB for 2.50 a month.

Sure, but then I'd have to manually shuffle data around between all of them. I'd rather just pay $10/month or whatever than have to risk fucking something up because I'm just rsyncing things back and forth.

"but I don't trust them and don't want to support them"

Is there any particular reason as to why? Have you considered SkyDrive, GoogleDrive etc?

Generic mistrust, coupled with Condoleeza Rice being on their board. A discussion that would be better saved for a different thread.

I don't particularly trust Google much more, either, but they've already got most of my stuff, and they're probably not as easy to squeeze as Dropbox is - so far, Google Drive has been recommended the most. (One problem: no linux client.)

I use an encrypted RAID setup to backup important data (bank access codes, passwords, important contacts)... but porn? Really?

I use these same hard drives that are in these:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-USB-Hard-...rn+digital+4tb

Just get an external hard drive, and then set up an automatic backup. Do not backup your stuff online, it's too easy to hack into cloud storage systems.

If your data is in your physical possession, it can't be stolen.

I was just listing everything I have, I'm not actually going to back up my porn on the cloud, it's not that important.

The problem with external hard drives is that they won't protect me from a house fire, and they don't help me when I need to access something from my backups at a remote location. (For instance, right now I'm about two thousand miles away from home.)

As far as cloud storage systems being too easy to hack into, I'm gonna go ahead and put a big ol' [citation needed] on that.