carbonite business is also based on trust. If customers don’t trust them because the owner is a flakey left-wing lunatic who is a Soros mini-me, then the business is doomed. Can you believe they will keep your backed-up files confidential? I can’t. So, it’s not just the fact they tried to be part of a bandwagon effect against Rush, which backfired. But, also because people can not longer trust them.
I’ve been using Amazon S3 storage backup. Basic pricing structure is 12.5 cents per month per GB with the first 5 GB free. I think I’m using about 20GB so with the 5 GB free, that works out to about $1.87 a month which is about what my last bill was.
Amazon does the encryption but my client app (duplicity for linux in my case) *also* does encryption so even if Amazon wanted to they couldn’t access my data.
It all runs in the background and I’ve tested it to retrieve the odd file and it works just fine.
Unlike carbonite you have to provide your own client software, but for linux that is dirt simple and I presume such software is readily available for other platforms.
Cheaper, more secure, and a way to tell carbonite to piss up a rope.
The external drive or thumb drive solution is fine as far as it goes but it’s not offsite and it requires manual effort (in most cases). My solution is effortless, secure, cheap, and works entirely in the background.