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ONLINE backup providers -Any advice?

Has anyone here had any experience of ONLINE (continuous) computer backup providers? I quite like the idea of selected files/folders being continually encrypted & backed up to remote servers, as I work. That way backups are always up to date.

I do have an external USB hard drive but am reluctant to have it running permanently, making frequent scheduled backups. Besides which, when I last needed to restore a backup from the drive, it wouldn't restore, neither would System Restore work either (I have never had any success getting System restore to work as I always get the message "System Restore has failed"; both using XP & W7).

I did subscribe to Memset's "Squirrelsave" but it wouldn't work on my Windows 7 machine. Others I am considering are "Bytebaq", "Humyo" & "Livedrive" (all based in The UK). There are numerous USA based companies too, such as "Mozy", "Carbonite", "Jungle Disk" & "Dropbox"; also "Memopal" (Italy), plus "Gigabank" & "Wuala" (both Switzerland). I take the view that a backup server that is geographically close to my ISP (XILO/UNO) in Maidenhead, is likely to backup faster than one based in (say) Los Angeles. So I tend to favour a UK based company; and one costing no more that £5 per month for 50GB to unlimited backups.

If anyone would like to give advice or make recommendations, I would be glad to hear from them.
:)
 
I'm currently using a piece of software called duplicity and backing up to amazon S3. This months bill is currently $0.16 - however I'm only backing up 0.728GB of data at present (well at least this way).

Its a bit tricky to set up, but its dirt cheap for small amounts of data. I believe there is a c# version which works in windows: http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/

One thing to remember is that ideally for a backup you would keep more than just the last copy of the data. Some of the online solutions are effectively just a mirror - delete the contents of a document and the contents go missing on the online copy too. Nothing corrupts quicker than a mirror! I suppose with these types of service you could use them to store a normal windows backup rather than the files directly.
 
Sorry don't use online backup (have a RAID 5 NAS and also a Drobo), however Leo Laporte has been plugging Carbonite (seem to be offering a free trial) for a long time and he's normally fairly picky about his advertisers. Unless you have enormous upload bandwidth it's going to be a slow business whether or not there is a small difference in latency. :shrug:
 
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Thanks Robert Naylor & Bob2002 for your comments.

The Amazon S3 applications look interesting, but are mostly quite complicated to understand by someone like me :confused: (who has never even set up a web site). I won't rule such products out until I fully understand them, though.

The Carbonite backup service looks a lot more client-friendly, but is unfortunately not yet Windows 7 compatible & has compatibility issues with various softwares too.

It seems that neither the Amazon S3 or carbonite packages do continuous incremental backups while-one-works; indeed carbonite states "When you are using your computer, Carbonite goes to sleep"! Robert Naylor's comment about it being important that a backup keeps more than just the last copy of the data, is a very good point. :nod:

There do seem to be a lot of detail differences in all the various backup packages & quite a few obstacles to fall over! :laugh:
 
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I use Acronis to make regular images of my Windows drive and keep all data on two other drives, one in the PC and one NAT; most office/data input programs I have used allow you to set the time between back-ups (in minutes), so would this not work?

I have restored XP (SP2 & SP3) from Acronis more than once, it only takes a few minutes.
 
Its probably going to be rather expensive to do continuous incremental backups, unless you set it up to avoid any temporary files and only backup areas you are going to need.

Not to mention its also likely to slow down you're computer, unless this is done at a file system level, even then I still expect some form a performance hit.
 
We use ReadyNAS in the office, and also have one at home.

That does all of the local data. I then have a VPS which has a rsync script to get any changes that have happened locally and then send over. Happens 4 times a day to both and works very well.

The VPS then gets backed up to another network backup utility, just in case ;)

Matt
 
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The NVX is expensive but they all do the same thing. You could get the two drive version (£250) which just does RAID1, which is all you really need.

Matt
 
I'm trying out humyo.com's free trial.

I've decided to try out the free 2-week trial at humyo.com as their service seems to be closest to what I want.

They say that their servers are in an ex Bank of England gold bullion vault in Manchester. So far, everything is working well, though as they warned, the initial backup operation is likely to take several days, not hours (I'm backing up more than 40GB, including lots of photos & music). Of course we are talking about UPloading, not DOWNloading, so on an ADSL "Max" line that means uploading at about 400-800kbps, about 10% of download speeds. Thereafter, only small incremental backups of changed portions of files will be made, in real time (as I work).

I do like their Windows Explorer shell add-on which marks folders & files on my PC that have been backed up:

The green ticks show that a file or folder is completely backed up online & the blue circular "arrows" icon shows that a file or folder is selected for backing up (or being backed up).

Their service costs £4.69 per month, or £46.99 per year (equivalent monthly cost of £3.92) for the first 100GB of storage. There are cheaper options out there & a lot of more expensive ones. Humyo does seem a very slick operation so far. :)
 
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Had a quick look at some of the popular services and scheduling uploads doesn't seem to have much fine grain control - which is important if you want to use an "off-peak" bandwidth allowance that many ISPs offer (of course I could have missed something). :hrmph:
 
Had a quick look at some of the popular services and scheduling uploads doesn't seem to have much fine grain control - which is important if you want to use an "off-peak" bandwidth allowance that many ISPs offer (of course I could have missed something). :hrmph:

The humyo.com service that I am trialing is one where you only need to do a significant sized upload ONCE. Thereafter, only new files/folders or the changed portions of files are uploaded; automatically & in real time. There's no need to schedule further backups once the initial backup is made; indeed it would be pointless. If (say) a file is changed six times, then only the six changed portions of the file are uploaded, making a choice of six complete versions of the file available to restore (unless you delete them to the online "recycle bin", where they are kept for 1 month).

I'm glad that that is how the humyo service works; I would not want to repeatedly upload 40GB+ backups! The odd megabyte here or there would hardly affect one's peak allowance.

The bandwidth of the initial backup can be adjusted so as not to interfere with internet use & the backup can be paused at any time.
 
I'm familiar with this type of backup, rsync has been around for a while. To be honest I don't think online storage is suitable for me. My initial upload would be around 200GB (includes lots of virtual machine images), plus any extra uploads if the VM image changes e.g. installing a large software package.

I'm probably better off with my redundant storage, or maybe bunging a hard drive into a cheap SATA USB dock ... :shrug:
 
I'm familiar with this type of backup, rsync has been around for a while. To be honest I don't think online storage is suitable for me. My initial upload would be around 200GB (includes lots of virtual machine images), plus any extra uploads if the VM image changes e.g. installing a large software package.

I'm probably better off with my redundant storage, or maybe bunging a hard drive into a cheap SATA USB dock ... :shrug:

I think you're pretty much on the money for your own needs. Althought I'd go for eSATA over USB anyday. (I've got hot swap sata in mine which does for my needs) Also refer you back to Captain Cretin's post about Acronis as it will do all you want and then some. (Backup and Recovery is the version I'd go for. The Workstation version is reasonably priced)

Re the online option...

The only comment I can make is that I'd be looking very carefully at costs over time and decide if you can do it yourself cheaper/easier/better in the long run.
 
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. . . Re the online option...

The only comment I can make is that I'd be looking very carefully at costs over time and decide if you can do it yourself cheaper/easier/better in the long run.

I do have an external Hard Drive, have used Acronis before & still possess Norton Ghost, plus Genie Backup Manager. The trouble is, that with "home grown" backups, you have to actually remember to do them, plus physically plug in & run the external Hard Drive. The backups are out-of-date as soon as you have finished them, because any work you then do on your PC is not saved until the next backup. An online backup system, where changed/added files are saved in real time, means that your online backup is always (within seconds) up-to-date.

My experience of trying to restore such back-ups is that they very often do not work. Two years ago, a BitDefender installation trashed my PC & then Windows Restore failed to work. Acronis backup images saved to the external Hard Drive refused to restore. I then discovered that big chunks of my Genie backups on DVDs were inexplicably missing upon restoring. Similarly, CDRs & DVDs can all fail over time. I retrieved some copies of lost files from relatives around the world, but eventually had to spend hundreds of hours working to replace work that had been lost.

Online backup of the humyo sort is probably near 100% reliable (only time will tell) and it's considerably cheaper than wasting money on backup software that doesn't do the job it is meant to do. Hard drives cost money too & can fail "at the drop of a hat" or on being dropped on the floor. Having all your important files replicated in one or more high security data centres is also much safer than having every copy of them in the same building (or in the same room) as your computer. One burglary or one fire & they could all be lost forever.

Another benefit of online backup is that you can access your own files from anywhere on Earth that has internet access. You can also choose to give other people access to any of your files that you want to share.

Obviously, there are limitations to online backing-up. One is the sheer length of time that a large initial backup can take & perhaps 100GB+ backed up using an ADSL Max connection, is just too cumbersome. As upload speeds improve and online backup/storage prices continue to fall, saving copies of your valuable files securely online, is bound to become even more attractive.

I doubt whether I will ever go back to "the old way" of backing up again. It may be cheaper, but it certainly isn't easier or better!
 
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An update on my humyo online backup.

Well, I've now uploaded about 23GB to my HUMYO.COM account & all went well, except for a solitary 4.1GB file (!) which stopped uploading for a few hours, then decided to complete without further hitch.

I've checked that all my files & folders are actually stored online. I have tried deleting a file to my recycle bin, then restoring it from humyo & it worked straight away.

My 2-week free trial has ended & I found it very quick & easy to pay the monthly subscription (using Paypal in my case). I intend to pay for 1 year's subscription next time (12 months for the price of 10).

It is very reassuring to see the green "tick" quickly reappear alongside any file that I have just modified; I know then that changes have been made to the online copy too. :)

I shall probably now just use my external drive for doing the occasional whole-PC image.
 
Amber Computers – My experience.

I have been testing the following Datafort (Bytebaq), Huymo, Livedrive & Mozy, which appear to be the main UK providers.

I would recommend that you take a look at http://mozy.co.uk/ as Mozy now have a UK offering with Data stored in Europe (not sure where). I found the product worked well, upload & download speeds were good, and I liked the interface. Can select different files/folders for separate user accounts on a single PC. Price is based per PC unlimited.

I have tested Bytebaq, but did not like the interface (no upload speed indication or how much to go, can only select folders not individual files, just not a very polished gui).

I have tested Livedrive and it also worked well for me. Livedrive appear to have the best offer, unlimited and, if I understood the sales rep correctly, you do not pay per PC). The only reason I am currently wary of using Livedrive is that they do not use Block-level backup as I would like to be able to backup pst files.

Huymo also tested very well, but if you run the software on another another PC or on another user account on the same PC, all your data will be merged, so you end up with the same files across all pcs/accounts.

Hope this helps.
Paul
 
That's an interesting write-up, Paul; thanks for joining the discussion. Online backups are obviously still in their infancy with frequent developments (ie. Mozy in Europe) & new "players" appearing on the scene.

Humyo is now part of Trend Micro, though no changes are yet apparent. The orange humyo logo is expected to change to the Trend Micro red colour though. I have now paid for 1 year up front at the equivalent of less than £3.92 per month (for 100GB). The system works well for me & I've already restored several accidentally deleted files
. :rolleyes:
 
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