Cucku calls it "social backup", but it's just a program that transfers your data onto your friend's computer for safe keeping, and vice versa. Peer to peer backup would be as appropriate. Your backup is encrypted, so your partner can't go poking around your stuff, but still offers the reliability and safety of offsite storage.

We can see a few problems with this setup. Their estimate is that 500MB takes 4 hours to back up on a normal ADSL connection. This is fine if you only have 500MB, but if you want to image your entire drive—500GB or so—that'll take 4000 hours. That's 166 DAYS, or about five and a half MONTHS. This is why online backup solutions need an initial sneakernet transfer of hard drives loaded up with your data (which Cucku does not offer in its current implementation). Everything is fine when you're just doing incremental backups after the fact. Also, you're limited to how much storage space your friend has, so you'll probably need to buy him a new hard drive as well.

Is it a good idea? Sure, but only for your most valuable files, and only if they're not more than a few gigabytes in size. [Cucku]

If your unit goes down, a backup can be delivered in under 24 hours. The units are $399 and $599 respectively, and come with a $99 and $249 annual fee. At this price, it's cheaper than rigging up your own backup solution on Amazon's S3 storage, but it might be a little steep if you just want to keep your vacation pics and music safe. Unless of course your name is Christina Aguilera and those vacation pics are of yourself nude, and that music is your next album. We have a server for you to put those onto. [Datto]