Given the experience I have had with online backup, I am hoping to help others avoid it.

I decided to use Sugar Sync in January. On May 10, I had to do a hard drive restore of my computer it was not a crash, so I checked and saw that 17 GB of my data, music and photos were all backed up on Sugar Sync before we proceeded. I checked a few of my most recent files and music, just to be sure I was confident in what was there.

On May 21, I was in the midst of a restore process with Sugar Sync (which was not easy) and all of my data disappeared not kidding. The entire file structure was back onto my computer, but every folder was empty. The data had been inadvertently deleted in the process. Through a PAINFUL communication process (I could never talk to anyone by phone without paying $99 and their chat was only open 7-4 M-F) and 2 weeks, they recovered my data which took me several more chat episodes to get restored properly.

That is, all except my music, which mysteriously would not restore.

On June 5 (yes it's now 2 weeks later) I was with Sugar Sync online about this (with an Indian person and I mean no prejudice, just hard to communicate) who told me they would escalate my issue to their engineers (I had heard this more than once in 2 weeks), and I would hear back soon as possible.Now it is June 9 and I still have yet to hear back 5 DAYS LATER.

In the meantime 2 unbelievable things have happened:

(1) I discovered that about 2/3 of my music was missing from the backup. I have 3 songs from Black Eyed Peas on my iPod but only one of them backed up and restored to iTunes. We lost over 700 songs! My bad that I did not do a more thorough check of what was being backed up.

(2) Three crucial folders of data from my desktop DISAPPEARED between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning: The book I had just spent a year writing, and 2 client folders. I was literally sick to my stomach how is it possible that an online backup service actually DELETES your files? fairly tech-savvy, this was not a weird user error!

Sugar Sync has yet to provide any explanation for why it randomly did not back up my iTunes properly, or why it deleted folders from my desktop. They only suggested that I "stop" backing up my desktop and do it manually until they could determine what was happening.

Even though I later found and recovered my precious data - deep in the bowels of their deleted folders.

This has been an unbelievable nightmare and not one I hope anyone else has to go through.