I know the general rule is to “backup all your data,” but before you do that, I think it’s so much better to prioritize and organize. It just saves you a lot of time in the long run–time spent on confusion of what exactly you DO have on your computer and time spent trying to find what you actually do use. I mean, realistically and sensibly, why would you backup data that you don’t regularly use or definitely want to keep?

For me, I found four specific things took up a lot of space on my computer: my artwork PSDs, my photography, my music and my saved videos. The first thing I dealt with was the photography. Why? Because, in my opinion, there’s no good reason why you should even backup photography yourself anymore if you have a pro account on Flickr, which is definitely worth purchasing. Nowadays, when I upload new photography to my computer, I upload the original size on Flickr (but only make it viewable to me), so it becomes a full backup, as well as serving as a gallery for friends and family. I feel for you when you say you have a slow connection, too…I had to upload a lot of photography to Flickr before leaving home, and that was all done on a 56k dialup connection. It can be done.

Everything else I first went through, with the exception of my music, which I knew I liked and wanted to keep as it was. I found I had a lot of saved, unfinished artwork that I never had any intention of finishing; or, I had grown in my techniques enough that it’d be stupid to go back to that level of work. So, I deleted them, and I ended up removing a ton of space-eating data that way.

The same sort of thing held true for the saved videos. I keep funny videos, but some of them were videos friends had sent me that, upon initial viewing, I didn’t necessarily find them funny, but I had kept them because I’d been too lazy to originally delete them. I did then, though.

For all of my music, my artwork and my saved videos, as well as all of my other small data, I used DVD /-RWs as data CDs. Each one can hold up to 4.7GB. If you decide to use them (I recommend you do if you’re planning on moving data!), you’ll have some trouble writing to them as data CDs if you typically use the average XP writing center to write your data. The best program I found to write to them, actually, is a free and terrible looking one called BurnRight.

In all of this, I’ve learned that one reason our hard drives keep getting larger is simply because we won’t delete what we no longer want or use, and I’ve also learned to become creative in how I backup my data. Like you, I think it’s absolutely stupid to pay through the nose for backup drives and services. DVDs may not last forever, but they’ll certainly serve the purpose of transporting your data and keeping it for the short-term; and, mind you, I have CD RWs that are over three years old that still work.

Good luck. The hardest part will be organizing, it sounds like.

But sometime this week, I need to at least back up all my document files. I really am slacking on getting things done since school started back up again.

Consider that the average home broadband connection can upload at about 30 KB/s. That means they’ll max out at just about 2.5 GB/day if they transmitted at full capacity for 24 hours straight. That’s alright, Carbonite only lets you upload 2GB/day anyway, so you’re covered (still maxing your connection for about 20 hours a day).

Well, if you’ve got 100 GB of must-recover storage, we’re talking almost 2 months of straight 20hr/day uploading before you can get the entire thing up to their servers. After that, daily changes shouldn’t be terribly problematic (about 2.5 days for a DVD (4.7GB) to upload).

Still, from a purely price perspective, Carbonite seems like a good idea. Even Amazon’s S3 service would charge you about $15/month for your 100GB of storage (and about $20 for the initial upload, plus some change each month for your changes). After you finally get all your data uploaded, you should be good to go at under $20 a month.

Which brings us back to the real issue here – web vs. external drive backups. At under $100 for a new 250GB drive (Newegg as of the past day or two), we’re talking 5 months for you to have spent that much – a tad over 2 new 250GB drives a year (at today’s prices of course).

The only key differences between the two are: speed of backups & recoveries and level of protection. You’re going to spend several months uploading all that data to any online service the first time, and still a significant amount of time retrieving it, should you ever need to recover it all. An external drive would be *much* faster in both regards. Still, if the house goes up in smoke, the external drive is gone, along with your data. An online service (should) be doing backups of all your data, ensuring that doesn’t happen – ever.

I think the key decision-making point here is how much you’re willing to spend, and how protected your data needs to be. If your only goal is to make sure a single drive doesn’t die and take all your stuff with it, an external drive (Christmas is coming up) should be an ideal choice – lots of storage, relatively cheap, and the fastest for backups and recoveries. If you’re worried about terrorist strikes targetted at your house, you may want to invest in a longer-term plan that uses some type of online storage.

You could also, of course, get an external drive and leave it at work. That way, unless you’re in the building when it goes up, you should never lose both the drive and the laptop at the same time. You still get the cheaper larger storage and the faster backup / recovery time, but you also get the added protection of an off-site backup. That is, assuming they’ll let you leave an external drive at work.

The only other alternative that comes even close to being practical in my mind would be backing up to a DVD. Again, a lot of time invested up front burning a ton of DVDs, but afterwards you wouldn’t be changing all that much data – once every few weeks you burn another 10-cent disc of data and you’re done.

If you’re asking for a personal opinion, I’ve gone with the external drive approach. While there’s no way I could cost-effectively duplicate my 1.2TB of storage at home for backup purposes, I’m able to get the large stuff that’s most important dumped to another series of drives, just in case one happens to die. I’m also using Amazon’s S3 service for some (relatively) cheap off-site storage for the stuff that’s absolutely irreplaceable, just in case my house does disappear somehow with all my data. Lots of stuff would still be lost, but the majority of it could be replaced eventually with some effort. It’s certainly not a perfect solution, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with…