Onlne Back Up-- Any Recommendations

[MisterMan]

Hi my external hard drive just died. I already lost all my data not backing up so then I started backing up but now the drive wont work.

I was at Panthip a few weeks ago too and didn't buy a HD and they are a bit more here in Phuket at the few shops I have seen.. so on principal I will shop around..

IN the meantime I would like to use an online service.

Any experience or recommendations? I am on a mac not that that matters..?

Thanks

[siamect]

Hi my external hard drive just died. I already lost all my data not backing up so then I started backing up but now the drive wont work.

I was at Panthip a few weeks ago too and didn't buy a HD and they are a bit more here in Phuket at the few shops I have seen.. so on principal I will shop around..

IN the meantime I would like to use an online service.

Any experience or recommendations? I am on a mac not that that matters..?

Thanks

You can use almost anything for a short term solution

Online backup services in most cases means you are completely in the power of the provider and if they have a problem, you have a problem.

You may say they will never have a problem, but I have seen one web hosting provider go down because of some dispute with the landlord that owned two houses far from each other. The houses were used as datacentres and they backed up each other. The dispute cause the landlord turn off the power of both datacentres. The customers of the provider didn't loose the data but it was locked up and they could never retrieve it again. I followed the case for a couple of months...

Most online backups are also deleting files after 30 days... Will your accountant be happy with that? Auditors require 10 years for book keeping and legal stuff...

Check how they keep history before you decide.

I never recommend anyone to use proprietary software but being on Mac (means you are screwed anyway) takes you to the Apple TimeMachine/ TimeCapsule.

It is actually good (I'll get sin for this) but you have to know the limitations (pushing old data out, hourly,daily, monthly schedule) and the fact that you are depending on the TimeMachine software to retrieve your data. Make sure you know what hourly, daily, monthly means and when the backups are cleaned out.

Long term, you should probably look for something else.

I have written some here http://home.siamect....mputing/node/34 I think this is really serious stuff...

Martin

[kennalder]

Hi my external hard drive just died. I already lost all my data not backing up so then I started backing up but now the drive wont work.

I was at Panthip a few weeks ago too and didn't buy a HD and they are a bit more here in Phuket at the few shops I have seen.. so on principal I will shop around..

IN the meantime I would like to use an online service.

Any experience or recommendations? I am on a mac not that that matters..?

Thanks

I used sugarsync for years and was very happy. I forget what they charged, but I think it will make you think twice about buying an external hard drive.

https://www.sugarsync.com/

They even have a free trial.

[Digitalbanana]

Hi my external hard drive just died. I already lost all my data not backing up so then I started backing up but now the drive wont work.

I was at Panthip a few weeks ago too and didn't buy a HD and they are a bit more here in Phuket at the few shops I have seen.. so on principal I will shop around..

IN the meantime I would like to use an online service.

Any experience or recommendations? I am on a mac not that that matters..?

Thanks

Unless you have many TB's of data to back up I'd buy a new hard disk for that one that died pronto if you value your data in any way? Prices are hardly going to break the bank these days with TB's well under 100USD. Use cloud back ups as secondary sources only.

[Tatsujin]

To follow up on others posts, an additional 1 (or 2) external HD's are always a good idea to duplicate your important data. We use 1 HD to create daily full backups of important partitions, and a 2nd HD to simply 'clone/sync' data from 1 drive to another as it changes.

Offline backups have their place also and I think Martin's post misunderstood most online backup policies with regards to retention of data. We've evaluated about 10 different providers over the past 2 years and now use www.mozy.com now as it seems to be the most robust, quickest and most reliable and flexible with unlimited backup capacity at 4.95 USD/month. Their data retention policy is as follows:

Mozy will always keep the most recent copy of a file if the follow conditions are met:

* You have an active account with Mozy.

* The file has not been deleted or removed from your computer.

* The file is selected for backup.

Mozy will also keeps all previous copies of a file for 30 days prior to the last backup.

Here are some examples to help explain how long a file is saved on the Mozy servers:

* If you signed up for a two year account and backed up once on January 1, 2009, you can still restore the same file on January 1, 2011.

* If you deleted a file by accident on the 1st day of the month, you will have until the 30th of that same month to restore the file.

* If you removed a file from being backed up on the 1st day of the month, you will have until the 30th of that same month to restore the file.

* If you run a backup once a day, after 30 days you will have 30 different restores you can select from.

* If you changed a file on the 5th, you have 30 days to restore the file prior to the change.

So basically, as long as you have an active account, you will ALWAYS have the latest most recent version of your files available, and if you did daily backups for example of files that changed every day, you'd also have up to 30 different PREVIOUS versions of that file available.

Hope that makes sense.

[siamect]

Offline backups have their place also and I think Martin's post misunderstood most online backup policies with regards to retention of data.

Can you please specify exactly what you think I misunderstood.

I would be very happy if my negative opinion of Mozy and others were due to a misunderstanding. It would make life a lot easier...

Martin

[astral]

I am not sure I would want to put my private data out in the Internet,

no matter how much the service may promise on the security side.

On a desktop, RAID provides the best security for data, with backup of

critical files to an external disk.

[siamect]

I am not sure I would want to put my private data out in the Internet,

no matter how much the service may promise on the security side.

Very good point...

On a desktop, RAID provides the best security for data, with backup of

critical files to an external disk.

I don't know if RAID provides security... encryption and firewalls provides security.

Some levels of RAID can keep your data supply more reliably than other disk arrangements because of redundancy etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Having said that, I have just about two weeks ago seen a Windows server loosing all the content on one partition in a RAID5 setup. Led to a complete restore of a corporate MS-SQL server. More than half a day of downtime.... Luckily I was not the one responsible for this... and yes they had a daily backup.

Martin