After hearing a few mentions of it, I gave Box.net a try today.  Box.net is a site that gives you a free location to store 1GB of files, which are then accessible via the web.  There are higher-capacity plans available for reasonable prices — the highest plan giving you 15GB of space and only costing $100/year.

Up until now, I’ve been using GoDaddy’s OnlineFileFolder offering to handle off-site data storage.  This serves as a backup mechanism to my primarily local backup, which I archive using FolderShare to synchronize files between machines.  OnlineFileFolder offers the same basic mechanism, with the one advantage of being able to access your files via WebDAV (Network Places in Windows XP), which gives you an easy drag-and-drop experience.  This functionality appears to be on the way for Box.net.  Another advantage of OnlineFileFolder is its synchronize tool, though it is frustratingly simple and doesn’t allow you to specify a schedule.  Box.net claims to have a synchronization tool on the near horizon, which appears to be far superior to GoDaddy’s tool, allowing you to specify a time for daily backups.  Price between the two offerings is close, with Box.net winning with a FREE 1GB offering (GoDaddy charges $10/year for this) and $100/year for their top 15GB offering (GoDaddy only goes up to 10GB, which costs $100/year).  One important thing to note, though, is that Box.net has caps on bandwidth, whereas OnlineFileFolder does not.  The bandwidth limits on the paid accounts appear to be quite liberal, though you definitely could not use the service to send a full daily machine backup file offsite (which is probably exactly what they’re trying to prevent).  Instead, you have to be a bit smarter, sending only the files that have changed (which I’m sure is how their synchronization tool will work).

Right now, I’m giving the free trial my time, but from the looks of things, I’ll likely be upgrading to their Premium offering as soon as their synchronization tool is released ($100 well spent for off-site backup).

Sign up for a free Box.net account