Amazon - Snapshots or full data?

Thank you for your reply. Though I am still fuzzy on snapshots. Such as, is it a real replica of my data? can I restore from it? and how big is it (relative to the size of the source data)?

The size question is important becuase I am currently syncing about 800GB to Amazon. I am still in process of the initial sync, and I project that the entire transfer time will be about about 6 days (around 150 hours), with the speed limitation being what amazon can take in from me, I have plenty of bandwidth to spare and it's currently moving at about 10Mbps. If the snapshot is indeed as large as the source data, then the snapshot will take just as long, and as my data size grows I could arrive at a point that I am perpetually uploading which I do not want to do.

So it all comes down to actually what is a snapshot?

Your points about mutiple backups are all valid. My current backup workflow is that all data reside on a resilient multidisk NAS in RAIDx, and the important shares are sync'd in near real-time to the cloud. I also maintain physical backup drive that I back up to quarterly and store in my neighbors house for additional offsite protection. in a worst case data failure, I would only be missing 3 months of data at most. I should also mention that this data is only family documents, photos and home video.