Online Backup

[ricleo2]

A friend of mine lost all her data on her computer recently. She had backed up all her stuff on two extra hard drives. During an electrical storm, she lost everything. Which got me thinking about an online back up service. Any one have any positive experiences with it? Any recommendations?

 

[NXIL]

Dear RL,

yes, it is good, and would have saved your friend's bacon.

http://www.informationweek.com...o=1&queryText=&isPrev=

Surprises abounded: The biggest name in the lineup -- AT&T -- had the single least impressive product, and the one service with a free offering was among the best. I was also pleased to learn that at least one of the backup plans (Carbonite) allows theoretically unlimited storage. This doesn't mean you can actually store terabytes of data (you can only upload so fast, after all), but it does mean you won't run into any sudden and inconvenient capacity limits.

Mozy Of all the solutions tested here, Mozy was probably the best of the bunch --easiest to work with, least intrusive, and most versatile. The free, no-hassles version of Mozy (for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista) provides you with 2GB of backup space; the unlimited-storage version is $4.95 a month; and the business-grade plan is licensed both by PC/server and the amount of storage. To that end, the free version is a great place to start, and if you outgrow it you can migrate to the for-pay plans easily enough.

The all-around winner for regular users and small business from this bunch was definitely Mozy, both for its plan structure and its unobtrusive client. Carbonite came in a close second, because of its even more elegant client design. Of the more professional-level services, I gravitated a bit more towards eSureIT thanks to its slightly more flexible handling of backup and restore operations, although both it and iBackup supported SQL Server and Exchange data. The big loser was AT&T Online Vault, which would be hard to recommend to anyone at all, especially given how much better all the competition is.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288751,00.asp

Carbonite Online PCBackup
Carbonite tries to make remote backup simple and affordable. Setting it up is a breeze, and restoring a file here or there is also a snap. But restoring a lot of data to a different PC presented some obstacles.

HP UplineHP Upline
This easy-to-use, reasonably priced online backup service also lets you do local media backups and file sharing, but it lacks important features, like version saving, open-file backup, and the ability to resume interrupted file uploads.

IDrive-EIDrive
Getting started with IDrive might be more confusing than with any other online backup service, but IDrive partly redeems itself with quick uploading and many extras not found elsewhere.

MozyHome logoMozyHome Online Backup
Mozy offers reasonably priced unlimited online backup that's highly configurable, but it could stand some usability improvements.


SOS Online BackupSOS Online Backup (beta)
SOS Online Backup is the only online backup service I've tested that's both simple to use and powerful. Even non-geeks can painlessly back up their folders and files, but the service also gives the more technically inclined an impressively powerful set of features to play with. Note: we got a sneak peek of this service toward the end of its beta-life. The service will launch on May 1.

http://www.backupreview.info/category/our-reviews/

http://arstechnica.com/reviews...solutions-a-review.ars

Conclusion

Of the services we tested here, Mozy Online struck the best balance between functionality and flexibility and is our overall top pick for an online backup service. The free version of the service is also worth using, but the delay between restoration requests and restoration file availability under the free service make the paid version more attractive.

http://www.macworld.com/articl.../2008/05/mozyhome.html

http://www.carbonite.com/blog/...and-Online-Backup.aspx

I'd like to draw your attention to an article from Heise Security that claims that some online backup services are not secure. I?m pleased that Carbonite was among the two that the writers were unable to compromise. While an article like this is not exactly good publicity for the online backup industry, if their findings are true (and I believe they are), some of these vendors deserve to be criticized for bringing weak products to market that damage the reputation of the whole industry. I agree with the sentiment expressed on Backup Review: "Online backup, like online banking and online credit card transactions, can be made to be very secure, but not everyone is going to do it right

http://backupreview.googlepage...ckupServiceReview.html

http://blog.auinteractive.com/mozy-online-backup-review

That ought to get you started.

I haven't used any of them, so I cannot make any direct recommendations, but, looks like there are some great options out there.

HTH GL

NXIL

 

[ricleo2]

What an informative response. Thank you.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I agree with the Mozy. I use it, and though I haven't had to do a restore yet...I feel safer.

 

[JustaGeek]

I personally do not understand it.

Why would you think that your personal, often sensitive information is safe on someone's server...?

I might be wrong, but I do not believe it. Get an external drive and back up regularly.

I know, I know, it can be stolen from your house, but at least you'll know that it happened, so you can act - change your Credit Card numbers, advise the authorities etc.

Just an opinion...

 

[NXIL]

Why would you think that your personal, often sensitive information is safe on someone's server...?

1) There is more in your credit report on you than is on your hard drive most likely....that, and some other databases, including the health insurance usage one.

2) Encrypt it: PGP, or

http://www.idrive.com/

idrive encrypts

Online data backup services encrypt your data before sending to the remote server.

http://readerszone.com/interne...e-backup-services.html

A SOS Online backup service offer a better degree of security by encrypting your data locally using the SSL2 encryption and transmits data to the server and again encrypt the data on the server.

I would actually worry more about gmail in particular, and, servers your email/web searches go through, in terms of privacy.....

NXIL

 

[DrawninwarD]

Originally posted by: ricleo2
A friend of mine lost all her data on her computer recently. She had backed up all her stuff on two extra hard drives. During an electrical storm, she lost everything. Which got me thinking about an online back up service. Any one have any positive experiences with it? Any recommendations?

Wouldn't a surge protector have helped?

 

[imported_Champ]

Best thing you can do is probably have an extra hd and just store backups...i just store important files (COD4 profiles and funny pics) on a backup and every 4-6 months i do a fresh install...but those files are always backed up

That and a surge protector...not a power bar they are 2 different things... a power bar gives no protection...MAKE SURE IT IS A SURGE PROTECTOR

 

[tw1164]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
I personally do not understand it.

Why would you think that your personal, often sensitive information is safe on someone's server...?

I might be wrong, but I do not believe it. Get an external drive and back up regularly.

I know, I know, it can be stolen from your house, but at least you'll know that it happened, so you can act - change your Credit Card numbers, advise the authorities etc.

Just an opinion...

I use mozy to backup all of my photos. I don't really care about CC#, that's fixable. You can't replace lost photos. Also, to be truthful I'm lazy, I wouldn't maintain a proper backup w/ an external drive schedule; using mozy fixes that problem.

 

[HeatMiser]

Very formative post above. I've heard that Amazon's S3 service is also good, but I'm not a user myself. They charge by how much storage space you use, so that is something else to consider versus the unlimited packages from the other vendors.

Another thing to note, Mozy is owned by EMC, which would give me more comfort that they will be around for a while.

 

[jrichrds]

For unlimited storage, Carbonite is least expensive ($49.99/yr, less if you get in on a promo). Mozy is next up at $4.99/mo. Both are encrypted, but last time I checked, you couldn't choose your own encryption key with either one (correct me if that has changed).

 

[RebateMonger]

Online backup has its place, but it's not a universal solution. First, if you have a LOT of data, you can get into bandwidth concerns. I've heard that Carbonite throttles your uploads if you try to upload "too much" data.

Be sure to TEST your online backups periodically. A fellow consultant using a "business-leve" online backup service found that, even though the online backups were failing, he'd receive no notification at all.

If you are going to need a large amount of data INSTANTLY, you won't get it from an online service. The pricier ones will airship you a hard drive with your data in an emergency.

Unless you do your own encryption, it's certainly possible that an online service could read your data. You'll have to decide if you trust them.

The ultimate backup is one that's offline and offsite and secure. Online backup meets those general characteristics pretty well. The only thing missing is that you really should have "full" system backups, too. I've seen people lose important data because they didn't know where some of their data really is and it gets skipped in a "data-only" backup, and because re-installing an OS and all the applications is very time-consuming. An "ideal" backup would be at least a monthly local FULL SYSTEM backup image, combined with ongoing "important data" backups that can be on the Internet if you wish.