I initially thought I could do the old keep a hard drive off-site at all times with a whole backup. That however would require me to remember to do it, which I have proven time and time again I could not. After all, for years I had a hard drive on my desk, but never manually ran the backup.

I decided finally that I should give the online backup companies that have sprung up the past few years a chance. I haven’t heard any downright horror stories involving them. In fact, most reviews I have heard were very positive. Their prices are quite reasonable: $50-60 a year for unlimited backup per computer.

Right now I am trying out Backblaze, which seems to have gotten great reviews from what I can see, has great Mac support, and has a wonderful option of paying to have a hard drive shipped to you with your data. Mozy does not have this option outside of DVD’s (great a stack of 100 DVD’s should be fun to restore) and Carbonite doesn’t seem to have any option outside of download restores.

I am currently finishing up day two of the initial backup to Backblaze. So far so good, I have about 25GB of 99GB backed up, which works out to just about 12-13GB a day. At this pace, I should be backed up completely in about six more days. After that, from what I understand the service continuously backs up any file changes and only the parts of the files that actually change, so future backups should almost be instantaneous.

I will report my experiences with this service as time goes on and I get to use it. Hopefully I will never have to test how good the restore process is.

1. iPhone – #1 on my list for a reason…it is the first cell phone that is easy and fun to use, while syncing without issues on Macs. Now for the bad news: gotta wait until December 28, 2008, as I am under contract with Verizon Wireless until that date. Hopefully by then the iPhone will have a memory increase or two, plus 3G wireless.
2. HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One printer - My current all-in-one printer is alright, but it is starting to have issues to say the least (like saying my black cartridge is a red cartridge every other printing job, requiring a printer restart). This printer from HP sounds really good and replacement ink might be even be a reasonable price for a change. The option for wireless or ethernet printing/scanning absolutely rocks…I can move the printer to another spot in the room and free up space on my desk. Plus it helps when I am using the Macbook on the couch or on the kitchen table.
3. Apple Airport Extreme router – If Time Machine ever gets official support for backing up to AirDisk connected hard drives, I will buy one of these routers as that feature will rock for laptop users like myself.
4. Laptop hard drive -  I really need to upgrade the size of the hard drive on my Macbook. The new 320GB laptop hard drives sound about right.
5. Large external hard drive – I am thinking that if I get #3 above, I will need a very large external hard drive for backups and other data. Something like a 1TB hard drive will work and provide plenty of space for future uses.

How many of these are realistic? #1 is definitely happening barring a financial disaster this year. Given how my all-in-one printer is acting, #2 is probably going to happen at some point.

The others? Probably more “wish list” type items, unless I get a major raise or something.

Update: Yep, it is the hard drive. The Apple tech support guy didn’t even question me, he just started the process to get it repaired. Also going to get the trackpad button on my Macbook fixed…it has been sticking recently. Time to do some mega backing up.