Comments on: Online Backup Options

By: Carolyn B.

Carolyn B. — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:03:03 +0000

I use Carbonite but may switch at the end of my year’s subscription. It takes a CRAZY lot of memory to run in the background, even if the program is “paused” or “disabled.” It also throttles the amount of files it will upload during that first massive backup of files, so it took me days and days for that first load. Otherwise, it is super easy and may be a reasonable option for others with fewer files than me (or faster computers) — I’d love to hear your comments. They have a 15-day free trial, fyi.

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:59:36 +0000

I’m glad to hear the Mozy is working well for other people. I may have to check it out again in the future.

Zoogmo sounds like a very interesting service. I saw something similar years ago, but lost track of the company. I like the idea of backing up to your friends computers.

rsync.net looks nice, but is a little pricey compared with Mozy and Jungle Disk if you have more than 5 or 6 GB of data.

By: Computer Backup

Computer Backup — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:22:04 +0000

ive been using the mozy backup for quite some time now and i havent had any problems, everything important i have is safe and secure – definitely worth the $5 a month

By: bluejay

bluejay — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:33:30 +0000

I have been using Zoogmo. You just invite your friends and you each give each other some space on your computers and Zoogmo does the rest. It runs in the background and automatically backs up your files. The best thing is that it is unlimited and totally free.

http://www.zoogmo.com

By: flavinator

flavinator — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:35:44 +0000

What about rsync.net – seems to support lots of protocols.

By: watershed

watershed — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:11:45 +0000

I also love Mozy. I use the free version as an extra-extra back up, only to back up a few *very important* folders (i.e. my dissertation– one can never have too many back ups of that!). I have the app installed and set to back up the specific folders twice a day (8am and 8pm) and it works effortlessly. I don’t even know when it is running. I’m impressed!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:13:57 +0000

I use Mozy Home on a PC and it’s wonderful. Pretty much effortless.

By: Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:43:41 +0000

I started using Mozy when they announced their Mac beta last year, and while they’ve certainly had some growing pains, we’re now up and running with a steady backup every night. I think we’re in the 25gb range now, with home videos and photographs and everything.

The interface isn’t very intuitive, and error messages are clear as mud. I wasn’t sure, the morning after, whether my back up had progressed, or if it had just timed out. I just gave up on backing up my wife’s Macbook, because she just couldn’t wrap her head around the thing.

If they could develop a simpler interface that soothes the paranoid mind of a backer-upper (think Time Machine), I think they’d be onto something.

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:53:37 +0000

@Martin – Thinks for the link. I haven’t heard of that one before.

@Arjun – The bandwidth is usually only an issue for your first backup. Once everything is backed up, you probably only change a couple hundred megs each day. Jungle Disk is taking about 15 days to backup my current hard drive, but I have a really slow upload speed. You can speed things up if you have access to a fast upload connection–like a univeristy–for a few hours (or days).

I still keep my hard drive backup, but I like the online option because it works in the background while I’m traveling. If I’m on the road for a few weeks it is nice to know that I’ll have copies of all my important files if something bad happens. I suppose I could use the online backup just for My Doucuments because those are the files that are likely to change frequently and be vital for recovery and then rely on my hard drive backup for everything else.

@Mike – I will look into Carbonite. I can’t seem to get their website to load this morning for some reason. The $50 per year might be cheaper than Jungle Disk for the amount of data I have.

@Les – If you have a lot of space on a server you might look into using rsync.

By: Les

Les — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:40:12 +0000

I have been using Carbonite. I also back up to an external hard drive. Carbonite backs up everything and then does incremental backups. Carbonite has good software and starts to backup a file 10 minutes after it is changed. It is fixed price. It will not backup external hard drives.

I have hundreds of GB on my Web server, so I am going to switch to a product that allows FTP backup to my Web server.

By: Mike Nash

Mike Nash — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:56:34 +0000

I have also heard a lot of good things on FolderShare, but have not tried myself. here are links to products mentioned:

http://www.carbonite.com
http://www.sugarsync.com
https://www.foldershare.com

By: Mike Nash

Mike Nash — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:54:26 +0000

I use and love carbonite for online backup. $50/year for unlimited data. For day to day file sharing between work / home as well as backup I use SugarSync.

By: Arjun Muralidharan

Arjun Muralidharan — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:40:30 +0000

Online backups are a great idea, but you need the bandwidth to make it a realistic option.

I personally prefer the home hard drive, and while your at it, get a RAID system sicne OS X has such excellent support for it.

This way 2 or even 3 out of 4 drives can fail and you still have your data thanks to checksums.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:00:22 +0000

Do you know Wuala?
1. http://download.wua.la
2. Installation
3. invitationcode: flash53brass

This is an invitation, I think, wuala will be a great killer app for sharing and backuping stuff.

If somebody else needs an inviatation contact me:
martin.gaeb@web.de

Martin