I think I've finally found my life raft from the sinking ship of Dreamhost. The last straw was a billing mistake they made a few months ago that took several days of angry correspondence to correct, during which time they credited the wrong amount four times until they finally got it right. Stuff like this doesn't fill me with confidence, either.

So, my idea now is that, rather than trying to find a single web host that will do a good job hosting my sites and storing my backups, I've decided to do my web hosting and my network backups separately. This brings my disk space requirements for my web host down to 2-3GB, which makes a provider like CheapVPS (reviews here and here) look pretty good. I'm still looking around for more CheapVPS experiences before I make my decision, but they would seem to be a good fit for what I need on the hosting end. Anyone know anything about them, or any other affordable VPS providers? Another option that Bitt mentioned to me is gandi.net, but their hosting service is in beta, and I've read some negative reviews that suggest they're not ready for prime time. Still, I think they're worth keeping an eye on for those who don't have an immediate need.

For my backups, I think Amazon S3 is the winner. Using s3fs and Duplicity, I have a fast, easily-mountable network backup solution that will only cost me a few bucks a month. The oversold web hosts clearly don't have an interest in letting you use the disk space they quote you, so a pay-as-you-go storage service seems like the way to go.