Need a cheap, reliable web server for permanent online backup.

Capitalizt

Banned
Nov 28, 2004
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My brother just lost 500GB of data (pics, videos, music, etc) due to his external drive crapping out and I really don't want to risk that happening for my data. I'm looking for a server from a dependable company that will allow me to back up around 600GB of data and keep it private. The most important thing is reliability (duh) so I'd prefer a good company that has been around a few years...and secondary concern is cost (something reasonable). I'm not going to have lots of up/down traffic every month..just an occasional FTP update to the backup files.

Any recommendations?
 

Fardringle

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2000
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You actually want to try to upload 600GB of data with the (likely) slow upload speed of your Internet connection? For reference, if you have a 640kbps upload speed and don't use the upload side of your connection for anything else, it will take about 2100 hours (just under 90 days) of non-stop uploading to complete the initial backup. I think I did the math right on that.. ;)

With that much data, you'd be better off to get a USB/eSATA external hard drive to store the data and keep the drive at the home of a friend or relative - or a bank deposit box if you want to be really secure about it. Not only will this be dramatically cheaper, but also much faster than trying to move that much data UP on a residential Internet connection.

As a side note, "cheap" and "reliable" rarely go together. You either get one or the other, not both. ;)


Anyway, to give you some actual online backup options to consider:

One of my small business clients uses Axis Online as a secondary backup for their most critical data (about 25GB). It seems to work well after the initial backup (that took about four days on their business DSL line) but it's not cheap, in large part due to the emergency recovery services that they provide including multiple older versions of files, and next day shipping of a hard drive containing all of the data to their office if it is ever needed. It costs about $50 per month for 50GB of storage.


These are a few random sites I found by doing a search for "online backup" on Google:

www.idrive.com does offer a service with 150GB of storage for $4.95 per month but I don't know anything about their reliability, security, or recovery options.

www.carbonite.com claims to offer unlimited online storage for a flat rate of $49.95 per year (or $134.95 for three years) but the few reviews I found were very mixed with a few good reviews and a few very bad ones...

mozy.com has a "pro" plan where you determine how much storage you need and provides professional recovery services, but it's pretty expensive with a monthly cost of $3.95 plus $.50 per GB of storage used.


If you want to do some research, this article from PCMag lists what they think are the best online backup services.
 

mpilchfamily

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2007
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Cloud computing= BAD

I would never trust some server company to keep a backup of my data. There drives can just as easily fail and you can loss your data. Not to mention you never know who has assecc to that information. IMO things like pictures don't need to be updated or changed so having them backed up to a disk is a must and gives you added security against loosing your data.
 

Laputa

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Jan 18, 2000
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Just buy two extra 1TB drives and clone the drives every once in a while. They will pay for themself in 2 years if you have to pay for online backup. It's slow and you can do it inhouse for cheap.
 

RebateMonger

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Dec 24, 2005
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Online backups are a nice concept if you don't have a lot of data (read: one to ten gigabytes). Beyond that, they mostly become slow and pricey. If you have more data, I like Online backups as a secondary backup of the VERY most important data, in case of a disaster or theft that takes out all of your physical drives.
 

Laputa

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Jan 18, 2000
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Yup! Keep in mind that we don't even last forever and so as the hard drives we have today. The hard drives we have will eventually fail. So the best option is to keep 2 set of the most valuable data that you can not loose. If you can backup the data to a different drive/server/remote location daily, that's likely the best option if you have that much resource:)
 

pradeep1

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
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I am in a similar situation and I've been looking at a company called Carbonite. They offer unlimited backup space for something like $50.00/year. The initial backup will take a long time if you have a lot of data, but once it is done, then incremental backups are not noticeable at all. I also have a 500GB drive that I backup to once every two weeks that is safely stored in a bank vault. Locally, I have backups to two separate network drives in our office and also to a portable 500GB external harddrive in my office. Every month or so, we backup the most critical data (~10 GB) to archival quality DVD-R disks and mail them to our offices in Florida and North Carolina for safe keeping. They do the same to us, as part of a disaster recovery protocol we have in place.
 

globalrevolt

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Nov 15, 2008
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Originally posted by: Laputa
Just buy two extra 1TB drives and clone the drives every once in a while. They will pay for themself in 2 years if you have to pay for online backup. It's slow and you can do it inhouse for cheap.


Backup newbie here....I hate to hijack this thread, but which is generally better and easier to use for backup purposes, to have an external RAID 1 setup (like running in a NAS server) or hooking up external drives directly to a computer and just cloning your data onto each drive as necessary ???

 

Laputa

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Jan 18, 2000
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Fiber options connection provide the fastest data transfer, you will ususally see this in a RAID 50 setup with some high end fiber channel SCSI or SAS drives. Then you will see RAID 5, this will usually work well in a NAS 1G-bit network. If you have just a single drive, the fastest way to do a direct transfer is via the available SAS/SCSI/SATA/PATA interface by connecting the backup drive directly to the system. For a typical home user, a external USB or a cheap NAS will do the job just fine. Speed wise, I would recommend a direct connection vs usb or via the network. It really depends on how much you are backing up and how much time you have and how easy you want the job to be done. If time is not an issue and you have doubt about opening up that PC, back it up via USB/network setup.