The only "free" online backups I would recommend are Dropbox and SkyDrive.  Of course with being free you only get a certain amount of storage.

How much data you backing up?

What I'd like is to backup all my files, folders etc. Checked one and all you get is 2gigs. My tutorials alone are more than that. I have a partition where most of my storage goes and that's over 40 gigs. I'm not counting what's in my pics folder, music and videos. I probably have 50 gigs or more. I doubt if there's one that big for free. I'm checking newegg. They should have an enclosure I can get that won't cost too much. 

Edit: Newegg has Orico, Thermaltake, Vantec and Ineo. Orico is the least expensive. They have two, one for $9.00 and another for $11.00. Some are higher like $30.00 and $40.00 bucks and one for over $100.00. Needless to say that's a bit high. I have a Western Digital SATA 1TB. Orico has one with USB 3.0 and one with USB 2.0. My laptop I don't think is set up for USB 3.0. It handles 2.0 with no problem. The last one was 2.0. Suggestions? 

The first link offers for select devices only. HP and Dell. Mine is a Toshiba. I don't know about the Chinese one though. Are they reliable?

Awhile back I posted a pic of the circuit board I took out of the external drive. There was what looked like a burn mark on it and I thought it had shorted out. Never did find out how. At any rate I've been looking at some newegg has. Probably go for one by Orica,

Ok...drive's fried....bin it, unless what's on it is worth thousands of $ in which case you can pay a pro to recover it.

Otherwise... Get a new one.  Don't go for something in a tight, neat casing....it'll likely overheat and repeat the issue. 

And I'm really sure the Chinese sites honor the privacy of the data. 

With all the Cyber Monday deals on Newegg, I'd take a look there, Uvah.

I have a question. Will a flash drive last as long as an external hard drive. Reason i'm asking is I can get a 128GB flash drive for a good price.

Thank you  Paul

Not sure the sites themselves are the problem ... more likely the strength of those who want to peruse the data. No site could really withstand the NSA or its counterparts. On the other hand, it would be easier to brute force the person's computer.

Of course, the question of the effort required to break encryption would then devolve to whether "it's worth it". More likely they would screen for 'bad actors' and decrypt them rather than brute force everyone.

A SSD would be recommended.

SSD's are beyond my reach right now. I'm thinking a flash drive right now. Much more readily available until I get a new enclosure.

Something like this will probably work well for you with that existing HDD you have Ross:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-3-5-SATA-Hard-Drive-HDD-TO-eSATA-USB-DOCK-STATION-/180563068018?pt=US_Drive_Enclosures_Docks&hash=item2a0a65c472

or you can get what I got a little while ago that works perfectly, can even duplicate drives:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STARTECH-SATDOCK22RE-SATA-HARD-DRIVE-DUPLICATOR-DOCKING-STATION-/400426727571?pt=US_CD_DVD_Blu_Ray_Duplicators&hash=item5d3b4af893

This is assuming you are using SATA II drives.

I meant that flash drives are painfully slow and rather that spending money on one as a substantial backup solution I would instead apply those funds towards "the next solution", whatever that may be.