Backing up my Macbook Pro Online

Hello,

I am after some advice on backing up. I currently back up to a hard drive, I plug it in and it syncs automatically with time machine. I'm pretty happy with that but I don't like having to keep it plugged in all the time, and I'm worried about losing the hard drive or something happening to it.

What options are there for automatic online backup of my system - documents, photos, settings, everything. Happy to pay for a service.

Also - I have an Ipad and I'm a little confused about it's back up. When I plug it into my computer it backs up? I'm not using Cloud. If I'm back up to the computer, would this in turn then back up the ipad and my laptop to an online system?

Thanks for any help, I'm not really great with tech stuff.

There are services that will do this -- such as Carbonite which you may have heard of -- but it will take DAYS (at the very least) to upload all that data. I can't quite see the point of that when HD backups are cheap and fast.*

*I'm not saying that you shouldn't have an offsite backup AS WELL for really impossible-to-replace stuff but that is probably just a tiny fraction of your total hard drive.

Don't worry about keeping the external HD plugged in all the time. It's a backup. If it should fail, so what? Go get another drive and do a new backup, you haven't lost anything.