Online backup services

[Fallen Angel]

Anyone had any experience of online backup services? Last night I finally got round to doing a full backup of my system onto an external HDD after realising it was quite a while since I'd done a full backup of the system  I do back up my web work regularly; usually sites I'm working on get uploaded to a test directory on the server as I'm going along on the grounds that lightening's unlikely to strike both my PC and the server, and all current sites are copied onto flash drives or SD cards that I tend to secrete elsewhere or keep with me, and I have an archive of old stuff that lives on another external HDD.

I've been looking at reviews of backup software - the ones that take an image of your entire drive - but I've currently got a PC and laptop that aren't networked, which necitates copying stuff from the laptop onto flash drives, and then onto the PC, then backing it all up onto the external HDD. Looking at all the stuff about the different backup softwares, I'm not sure I need the OS and apps and everything backing up (though I do need to do a check of what I've got installed on each machine and check where my backup disks and licence keys etc. are - they're safely stashed in a number of different safe places at the moment and I need to get them all together. It seems that option would require me getting two licences, one for each machine, and another external HDD for backing up the laptop separately - which altogether would cost me mega £££'s, so...

...I've been looking at online backup options, and Carbonite looks okay. Anyone had any experience of online backup services? Opinions?

[Fallen Angel]

Just an update on this. I've been happily using Carbonite on my laptop and desktop since January with no probs, infact it's great because I don't have to remember to do anything because everything gets backed up automatically, and unless I want something bumped up the backup queue to be backed up straight away (I can tell it to back up certain files before anything else, though vital stuff I always do local backups as well). Had a bit of a panic this morning though when I got an email through from them saying my backup hadn't been updated in a week - eeep! Then when I read the email realised it was for the desktop, which won't have connected to their servers to request a backup recently as I've been working exclusively on my laptop recently, so it's not been switched on to connect to anything.

We're writing to alert you that your computer XXXXXXXXXXXXX has not contacted our backup servers for one week, and your backup may not be up to date.

If your computer has been turned off (or disconnected from the Internet) during the past week, make sure to reconnect soon so that Carbonite can update your backup.

If your computer has been on and connected to the Internet during this time, please respond to this email for assistance so that we can make sure your backup is functioning correctly.

Nice to be warned of potential problems though.