BDAqua,
I don't think any of the remote backups like CrashPlan and Carbonite are viable/practical over dialup. There's just to much data for a slow speed connection. I'm actually surprised it report only 62 days. At dial up 62 years might be more likely.
FYI, I use CrashPlan over a relatively slow 1 MB/sec DSL connection and I recall the initial backup taking literally around 45 days for probably around 200 or more GB of data. My philosophy was, oh well, let it run and eventually you will be backed up. And eventually I was.
One nice feature about CrashPlan is that you can just have it backup to a local USB drive if you have one. That takes hours vs. days or months. Howevr Time Machine may be just as effective for local backup, perhaps better.
Here's my complete strategy in case it's useful:
- I back up my "core system" to a USB partition with Carbon Copy Cloner (free). That way I have a bootable drive in case I need it. It gets refreshed about once a week.
- I use TimeMachine with Time Capsule to backup all data on my MacBook and USB drives (but not the backup drive).
- I back up most data with CrashPlan. It may seem like overkill at this point. But I live surrounded by National Forest where wildfires are unfortunately relatively common. So if the worst happens and the house burns down at least I'll have my data (and probably nothing else).
BTW, for I think around $125 CrashPlan will send you a USB drive that you use to do an initial "seed" backup. You then send the seed to them and from there it's only incremnental backups.
If I had to do just one thing it would be Carbon Copy Cloner to a dedicated USB drive. I'd use it to backup my entire system and pray for no fires.