http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-online-backup-sites.htm

1. How do I know if my ISP has a free data storage service for all of its customers?
2. Out of Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, which one is the least likely to go under in the near future? (say 5-10 years)
3. How reliable is cloud backup? What if a part of your data gets stored on some remote computer in Russia and the cheap system went down?

I would say Google is the most stable. Though I dont see Microsoft going down anytime soon either.
Cloud backup is pretty safe, depending on what option you go with. http://www.carbonite.com/ is supposed to be a good one. Though I always prefer a local backup over online storage. Way too slow to upload anything over 30GB.

Don't bother with it.


Neither Hotmail nor Gmail are going anywhere any time soon. I don't expect Yahoo! Mail to go away either, but of the three it is the most likely to disappear

Cloud backup is reliable enough. It's the simplest off-site backup for most people. Any decent cloud backup has multiple backup server clusters which all hold your data, so even if one server goes down, your backup is still out there somewhere.

If I were to recommend any pay-for cloud backup, it'd be http://www.crashplan.com/.

You can see a basic run-down of a bunch of free cloud/off-site backup/syncing services http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1177019-its-world-backup-day/

http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1440

The first 35GB of data can achieve upload speeds of up to 2 mbps (megabits per second). -- takes a bare minimum of 40 hours to do
Between 35GB - 200GB of data can have the upload speeds reach up to 512 kbps (kilobits per second). -- takes an aditional 750 hours to back up to 200 GiB (790 hours total)
200GB or more of data can be uploaded at up to 100 kbps (kilobits per second). -- will take another 6990 hours to back up 500 GiB (7780 hours total for 500 GiB)

So, in other words, to back up 500 GiB will take you A YEAR of CONTINUOUS backups due to Carbonite's evil throttling policy. Hence, why they are horrible. If you upload speed is above 2 mbit, you'll never see the advantage of it with Carbonite, and their service gets progressively worse with every upload. To put this in comparison, someone with a 5 mbit upload speed can upload 500 GiB in "only" 10 days with continuous uploading -- MUCH faster than what Carbonite offers (34 times faster, to be a bit more precise)


CrashPlan does not throttle and they allow you to "seed" your first upload: you mail them a seeded hard drive so that way your first upload doesn't take forever.

Why is yahoo mail less reliable than Gmail and Hotmail?

No one said it was less reliable, just the most likely of the three to not be here in 10 years, which is still incredibly unlikely. If both Gmail and Hotmail were 99.9999999% likely to still be here in 10 years, then Yahoo would be 99.9999998% likely to be here. (the reason being Yahoo's profits are struggling to maintain their margin, and in fact Yahoo! search is powered by Bing).

Since Gmail and yahoo limit attachment sizes to 25mb, I guess hotmail is the only option here.
But why does hotmail boast an unlimited storage, while windowslive skydrive only gives you 25gb of free space?

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1177019-its-world-backup-day/

Other than the microsoft skydrive based services, which other one out of the list is the most likely to survive 5-10 years?

You can upload to an external site and mail the link, if attachment limits are a problem.

Using webmail as a backup is a great way to make you swear at yourself/the computer.

Because Skydrive svcks


Skydrive isn't on there because it svcks with it's ridiculous restrictions. Windows Live Mesh is on there because of unlimited P2P syncing. I'm not going to make any predictions on the future of that list because it is silly to do so (as was making predictions on the future of hotmail/gmail/yahoo). Like Windows Live Mesh, CrashPlan has a P2P option that is encrypted, so if you are worried about a company going under, just use CrashPlan's P2P option.

If you want to use more than one service, do you have to upload to both of them? do these services offer any direct transfer feature (from each company's servers)

Yes


:rofl:

Since they do use software, though (for the most part) you can just add the same folders to multiple services. You'll still be uploading to both services, and you're system has to devote resources to both of their applications, no good way around that.