Choosing the backup "bank" for your data
Thanks for the post suggestion Bill!
The cash analogy…
Here is my question: Do you leave your money on the dining room table? Â I mean all of your money. Â Is it sitting there in large piles?
I’m going to assume that you’re saying no and are wondering what my point could possible be… Your money is in a bank, you’re not an idiot, but you’re having doubts about me. Â Fine. Â Good.
Now let’s talk about your data (and expand the analogy)Â
Are you backing it up? Â You should think of backing up in the same way as you would your money. Â There are different levels of security for your backups, just like your cash: Â you could keep it on the table, put it under your mattress, pool all of it with your neighbors and take turns guarding it, Â or (crazy though) put it in a bank. Â However, with your money, you probably don’t do any of the first ones, relying on the bank because it is the most secure option.Â
Each of the above solutions for money provides a good analogy for your options with your data: Â Leaving all of your data on your computer is a bit like using the table. Â An event that destroys the computer (table) will obliterate your data (money). Â You could make copies of your data on hard drive, which is akin to the mattress (even if you use fancy software). Â If your house burned to the ground, your data would too… Â You could Google the words “data backup” and choose the first service that comes up, even if you’ve never heard of it. Â That’s about as safe as leaving your cash with the neighbors and hoping that they’ll not fall asleep while guarding it…
My ever-so-subtle point
Obviously, I’m driving for the bank option. Â A good data backup should be kept somewhere safe, but also in a location that has a great reputation. Â You want your bank to be able to cough up your money no matter what disaster strikes and for that, you need an established institution.
Mozy and Carbonite are my two recommendations.  Both offer online incremental backups and both offer a flat rate service.  Currently, Mozy is 4.99 per month.  Carbonite, on the other hand, has a 50 dollar fee per year.  There’s no point in me arguing which is better (it would be like telling you to bank with Chase Manhattan – mostly preference), but they are both reputable and your data will be safe. I’ve tried Mozy and I liked it, but I’ve heard good things about Carbonite. Choose either one and you’ll be in good hands. *
You are going to need a decent internet connection for these services to work and the first time you backup your data, it’s going to take A LONG TIME.  Don’t worry – this is completely normal.  Once the first copy of your stuff is online, Mozy/Carbonite will just update the things you’ve changed.  Both have good technical support to help you through this process.
Final thoughts…
As a last note, I want to point out that I don’t have anything against backing up using hard drives. However, I think of a hard drive like a wallet. Yes it’s a place to keep your cash, but you wouldn’t want all of your money in your back pocket. I have a few external hard drives, but they are not my final line of defense.
Let me know if you’ve had any experience with either of these services in the comments! Â
~abÂ
* if don’t want to flip a coin, take a brief glance at these links….
I’ve used both, and currently use Mozy. Mozy has definite limitations but has served it’s purpose, i.e. I set it to back up critical files on a pretty frequent basis (several times a day) and saved my butt once or twice.
I’ll look through my old emails to tech support for things that I found lacking, as I remember the main one was that if for whatever reason you lost/stopped a connection the entire back-up did not work. So if for instance you were back up everything (outlook email etc) and you shut down/lost connection 90% of the way through nothing was backed up. I seem to remember Carbonite would just pick up the process on the next connection (a much better way to provide for large back-ups)
I believe Carbonite was more powerful in many regards and will probably go back to it once I get to about 1000 other tasks ahead of it.
That said seeing the ‘Your files were just succesfully backed up’ pop-up message several times a day gives me peace of mind.
Many people I recommend this to are ‘squeamish’ about having their information ‘out there’; I’d say that makes as much sense as not ever putting/sending the data via email or not having a personal/professional website hosted. Data storage/security is what these companies do.
As someone who has lost critical work more then a few times, I have to say I back this suggestion 1000%
Just replying to myself here.
I’d like to see back-ups have the option to do ‘versioning’ meaning not just over-writing files with the newest version but creating new back-up sets in case you want to access an old version of a file. Maybe you could set 3-5 as the # of versions and it would create versions until it reached that #, then start again (over-writing the oldest version), maybe one could even save versions.
Good analogy …
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@Michael: I’m sure you know this already, but on Macs, Time Machine does “versioning” back-ups (to some extent). If you run Time Machine and then use an online back up like Mozy, you get the best of both worlds.
I currently use Mozy on my Mac, and the version I have does restart where it left off for a canceled or disconnected back-up. I chose it over other options, like Elephant Drive, because I liked the user interface the best. When I first installed there was a server side bug preventing me from fully utilizing my upload bandwidth, but their support was extremely helpful and quickly resolved the problem. There are some minor bugs on the client where it does not always display how much data needs to be backed up accurately, or when the last successful backup was, but overall I am very pleased.
bp, I haven’t used a mac in years but it seems like I should switch back (Vista has been making that abundantly clear to me for while).
I believe an analogy in PCs might be restore, but i’d be loath to try that and Mozy together.
I’ve been thinking of going with the new Macbook Pro 17″ (8 hour battery life!) and the Mozy news might be the clincher; I don’t have Mozy back-up my Outlook Email because that invariably runs out of time before i need to pack up and go, and on m pc, unlike your Mac, that just cancels the entire back-up (meaning i don’t get the files or outlook)
Thanks for the heads-up
michael, it’s surprising to hear that it would work differently on a PC. Are you aware that the % completion always restarts from 0% every time you stop and restart the back up?