Backup!!

Early in 2009 I reviewed several online backup services and my conclusion was that if you want a hassle free solution the best way was to use dropbox for the active documents you are working on, as you have online versioning, local copies in your computers and everything is transparently synchronised. They give you 2Gb for free and if you do need more, then space with them is not cheap. For 50Gb (next step) is $10 per month, which with Google for $5 a year, you have 20Gb. Petty that we are still waiting for a Gdrive…

The other one that I chose was Backblaze. For $5 a month you can backup one computer to the cloud.

I emphasized that it is very important to keep backups in a different location, and that is why I took a look to backblaze, carbonite, mozy, etc…

Now, there is another player that I either forgot or that it is new. I don’t know.

Also there are some remarks I want to make.

First remark is that if you have lot of storage in use, these online backup solutions might not be good. It takes ages to upload everything and I don’t want to imagine what happens if you happen to need the whole thing, not just a file you deleted.

Some, for a fee, can send you a HD. This is good. Some also, for the first backup they send you an HD you copy it locally and you send it to them. This could be a good option.

Crashplan

The newcomer is crashplan. It is by far my first choice. Let me tell you why.

Crashplan does this: they can send you a hard disc, you copy whatever you want, you send it and voila. Same for restoring.

Of course you have a software in your Mac, Pc or even Linux to sync with crashplan servers.

The great thing is that for as little as $3.5 a month you can back up everything you have. And for $5 you can backup everything you have in your house!! including all computers, external disks and NAS. Everything for as little as $5 a month.

Now, the software you use, which is great has something that nobody else has. You can back up for FREE from one computer to another. So you install crashplan in your laptop for free and you back up to your desktop computer. All this peer to peer backup is free and hassle free. Of course both computers should run the software. Ah, and this include your computeres or your friend’s. You can back up your laptop to your mum’s computer in the other side of the world if you wish.

For me this is the winner by far.

I tested it. You have 30 days trial to upload to crashplan unlimited data. I selected my two photo folders and starting backup from my mediacenter. Both folders have around 250Gb. Well the estimated time was something like 4 months. Not a solution for me then.

Also I cannot backup this to any other computer. I would eat my mum’s hard disk if I do so.

I do have backups at home but offsite backups is something I still don’t have (except for the 45.000 photos in flickr). At home though every computer has raid 0 (except the mac, but it has timemachine on a computer with raid mirror)

For me the solution is a NAS that rsyncs with another NAS in a different location. The first backup can be done at the same place then you just sync changes. If your house is lost in an earthquake then you can always mail the other copy.

This is a far more expensive solution, but it is the one I am choosing. The winner for that is Synology DS-1010+, but this is another post….