I’m pretty lucky- I haven’t had a major data loss since 2002. I was in my first semester of law school at the time and using an old laptop for taking notes in class, carting it back and forth in my backpack. Every Wednesday morning after first class, Dean Peter Hogg (arguably Canada’s foremost constitutional scholar) would host a Dean’s Coffee Break, with coffee, tea, juice and muffins free of charge- oddly, I am still impressed by free tea once a week at a school that was charging me $20k in tuition. I was standing up talking to Dean Hogg about some trivial topic and trying not to sounds like a total moron, when suddenly I started to smell something burning, something electrical. Other people started to notice, too. And for some strange reason, my back felt particularly warm…
Oh crap…
Too embarrassed to admit that the burning smell was actually coming from my back, I politely excused myself and briskly walked outside, tossing my bag into a snow bank as soon as I was out of sight. I certainly didn’t want to become known forever in my circle of legal peers as “That guy whose backpack caught on fire in the middle of a conversation with Dean Hogg”.
I lost some data, but not a lot- my music collection was toast, as well as a lot of my class notes and course summaries. I hadn’t fully switched to digital photography at that point, so while I had lost some pictures there weren’t too many. Even so, losing what limited data I did have was a huge disruption. Six years later, I have a lot more sitting on my hard drive- virtually every picture I have taken since 2003 has been digital, my music collection has been fully converted to MP3, and most of my important information (including tax records, employment records, writings, etc.) is stored digitally. While I have made occasional backups, these have been infrequent and a major crash today would be devastating. I’m sure many others are in the same situation.
With this in mind, I’m currently trying to find a reliable, invisible system for backing up my data. My rough estimate is that I’ve got about 50GB or so of data that I want to save. Here are what I see as my options:
Option 1: Backup to DVD - I’ve been doing this on and off since The Great Laptop Fire of 2002, but it’s cumbersome and difficult to keep up to date, especially as I add new files every week. This is probably the worst option, but I’m including it here anyway. If you’ve got less than 5GB of important data, it might be an okay solution. For me, it’s just a pain.
Option 2: External Hard Drive - External hard drives are available for under $100 and offer an excellent solution for backing up data. Files can be transferred with just a simple drag and drop, or using a program like Time Machine (for Mac) or Sync Back (for PC) to schedule regular backups. Using an automated method has the benefit of ensuring that my archive is kept up-to-date at all times- let’s face it, I’ll remember to back up regularly on my own for about the first week, and then won’t think of it again until 10 minutes after my hard drive crashes again.
While this option protects data from hardware failure such as a hard drive crash or system failure, it still leaves data vulnerable to other threats like fire or theft. To prevent this, I would have to keep my external drive off site, complicating matters a little more and making automatic backups a bit less automatic. I would also need to maintain my primary copy of data, as an external drive is at least as likely as an internal drive to fail.
A more elaborate method would be something like the Drobo, a 4 drive external storage system with multiple redundancies to prevent loss of your backup copies. While impressive, it’s certainly overkill for my purposes and costs more than I’m prepared to spend right now. Looks pretty neat, though!
Option 3: Online Backup - The final option is see is utilizing an online storage provider to backup my files. In a very rudimentary way, I’ve been doing this with some of my documents for a while by emailing them to myself with Gmail. For my whole drive, though, this system isn’t a very convenient option.
I’ve been looking at and playing with a number of online backup services that would allow me to have off-site storage and regular scheduled backups. One of the most cost-effective providers appears to Mozy- they offer unlimited storage for $4.95 per month. They also offer a free account capped at 2GB of data, so I’ve been using this as a trial to see how well their system works. So far, I have found that the interface works well and my test uploads have been trouble free.
A close second is Carbonite- they also offer unlimited storage at a price of $49.95 per year. I have signed up for a 15 day free trial to test things out, and while the uploads work fine, the interface is a little more clunky. I’m also having trouble uploading video files and customizing what files I want to back up and which ones are fine to leave alone.
The reviews on both Mozy and Carbonite are generally positive, but, as with any product, there are some people who have had bad experiences. Mozy’s security and encryption systems in particular appear solid, but my biggest worry with an online service is reliability- will either of these companies be around when I need it? More importantly, what happens if their system fails? Am I totally out of luck? Probably.
My Decision - Undecided
An online storage system offers the security and protection of off-site data storage and automated backup, but with more potential weak links, both technical and corporate. In the long run, it will also cost significantly more than buying an external hard drive.
Do you have a data backup system in place? Any recommendations from people with experience with any of these options?
Photo by Topato.
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If you own a hosted domain with unlimited storage (as many of us do), you can use ftp, domain email, or your host’s file transfer utility to store your files there. Set up a web drive on your desktop to make it easier.
For all online backup, file sharing and storage related info, I recommend this website:
http://www.BackupReview.info
@Mr. ToughMoneyLove - That’s an excellent idea, I hadn’t thought about doing it that way. I use BlueHost as my host and the current package I have gives me 15GB, but the same package has since been upgraded to unlimited data storage. I wrote customer service about getting upgraded and they told me that once I pass 80% disk usage I can request the increase. Why they can’t just do it now, I don’t know. I guess it’s time to upload 14GB of pictures…
@Jenny- Thanks for the comment and thanks for the link. Do you have experience with any of the services reviewed?
MGL, don’t waste your money on online backup. Check out http://www.knowliz.com/2008/08/how-to-get-virtually-unlimited-online.html to get it for free.
I would prefer to have my backup at home. The day I need it I may have no Internet connection
Solutions like SimpleTech’s portable Signature Mini drives come with both local backup and online backup for double protection. Working in the storage business form more then 10 years, I can’t stress enough that you ALWAYS need to have two copies of your most important stuff. Ideally, one copy should be kept in your home or office and another offsite in case of fire, theft, etc.
Erin (a SimpleTech employee)
I’ve been thinking of online backups as well. Currently we use a hard drive and copy info between our laptop and pc. It’s ok but we don’t do it often enuf (1x per month maybe?) and like u mentioned, if the house burnt down then it would all be gone.
I thought of backing up everything to my website host but I was worried about security.
Mike
Most online backup solutions are secure. If you use an online backup solution like Fabrik Ultimate Backup all files are encrypted with 128-bit SSL encryption (it would take millions of years for someone to crack a 128-bit key) while in transit, with an option for a private encryption key. When your backup arrives at the data center, it’s encrypted again with 448-bit Blowfish. Now that’s secure!
We use strictly Mac at home, so we bought a 500GB Time Capsule which works with Apple’s software, Time Machine to automatically back up any files that change. It’s a pretty sophisticated system which keeps hourly back-ups for (I believe) 24 hours, then it keeps the newest one from each day going back a week, then it keeps the newest one from each week going back a month and so on. ie I have a backup every hour today, every day from the past week, every week from the past month and every month since we started using it.
Granted we haven’t had any data losses, so I can’t really attest to how well it works once you get to that end of the problem!
For work I back up to a flash drive that I keep offsite. One evening while I was working there was a small electrical fire in another part of the building and I had to evacuate before I backed up.
I hung out in the parking lot until the fire department gave the all clear and went upstairs to back up regardless of the smoke smell.
When I was teaching computer courses a couple of years ago, I used to tell my students there were two kinds of computer users: those that backup and those that haven’t lost any data….yet.
At home I use Cobian a free/donationware open source program along with a pair of USB external hard drives. One is 200Gb and the other is 500Gb. You can find it at http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm. I do my backups in the evening and store the drives in my filing cabinet at work the next day(along with all the negatives for my pre-digital photos). I bought both drives on sale at various times so the cost is fairly reasonable. Cobian can use compression to save space or without it creates a duplicate of your data structure. The latter makes it easier to go on the drive and select files to restore. It also does incremental backups quite nicely.
At work I use Acronis True Image to create archives on an external drive. Acronis can create a restore image which is useful for restoring a full system. I build a hard drive with the operating system and all software installed and updated and then create an image. The archive gets “mounted” and then you can select what you want to restore - the full drive or just selected files. You can create images on DVDs or hard drives (internal or external). I think the cost is around $129.
Finally, PCWorld and/or PCMag have had reviews of backup software if you want something different.