Online/cloud backups?

[Kayos]

Ive just had a very squeeky bum moment with my backups and data, I dont want to go into huge detail but I do have a 99.99% good copy of my data, and I need to stick it somewhere safe, either short term or hopefully long term (about 1.2TB at present)

Random googling has landed me here http://backupintelligence.com/?gclid=CLqhmMbSndQCFQIG0wodrIwGSg but before i install it or commit my good copy to the cloud gods, is it any good? can i really get unlimited storage for £4,99 a month?

I do have very very fast internet if that helps

 

[mangocrazy]

I'd be more inclined to use an external hard disk drive and backup to that. This is the kind of thing I'd be looking at:

http://www.ebuyer.com/620325-seagate-2tb-backup-plus-slim-portable-drive-stdr2000202

There is no such thing as 'the Cloud'. It's just somebody else's computer.

 

[gaz1]

im with external drive myself im on 3 tb and 2tb hard drives for backups i also update these every 2 years or depending on usage of the back up hard drive as its unplugged after ive backed everything up onto it

im not a lover of online back ups too much can go wrong with them or lost data either way thats been sent at least if hard drive does go down you can pull a right good chunk off of it without losing all of it

 

[rikrobson]

You have to remember that all tgat data to the 'cloud' has to go over the internet. Depending on the service you have the upload speed will be fsily slow compared to you download. A 200mb virgin connection is only 12mb up and a bt infinity top speed 80mb is only 20mb. If you are still in on the older adsl services then its going to be approx 10% of your down load. As a rough rul of thumb divide the bits per secong by 10 to get the bytes ber second. So if you want 1.2 tb uploaded and uou have a slow connection its going to take some time. Also thats asuming you dont download wile you are waiting.this will use some of the upload to acknowlede the receipt of data and why the upload speed is about 10%

Youll be better off buying a decent external drive. To copy the data to.
There are ways to connect drives together to add redundancy called raid1. This duplicates the data on two drives but the pc only sees one drive. There are varios raid configurations for speed and redundancy
You can alao setup a nas which is like a wee box tgst has your own peraonal cloud storage. There are apps to copy the data automatically oot you can manually do it

 

[Kayos]

I have a nas on a different site, just asI discovered this had an issue one of my internal raid1 drives also decided to have an issue

I have lost about 100 recent photos (out of 120k) due to how it's all set up, so I still have a good copy on one hard drive, can't trust the nas data as that has a problem, plus it synced from the degraded raid1 before I spotted that issue

I am looking at a usb3 external drive but I want an off site backup, my home made option has let me down hence looking at the cloud, I want to copy my good data to 2 locations then replace my internal drives, having just one copy makes me feel uneasy, especially as my good drive is identical to the failed one

 

[angellonewolf]

i have 2 external harddrives copy the same on each one every few months and keep a copy on the pc

if i reload the pc i got 2 copys and just copy it back once reloaded

 

[rtbcomp]

I use Dropbox, mainly so I can access my files when I'm away from base and let other people share my files. Photos and Videos also go on Flickr.

With Dropbox you specify a given directory to sync with, mine is on an external USB drive so that automatically gives me a local synchronised external backup of my latest data.

I also backup incrementally to another USB drive so I can gain access to historical versions of my data.

Finally I have a USB drive on my router which I sync data to , this allows me to access the data from my tablet when the computer is switched off.

Finally Finally I sync once a week to an old XP machine - because it's there and I have nothing better to do with it.

One disadvantage of using mapped drives (drives identified with a letter) is that malware such as ransomeware can access them.

 

[Kayos]

@rtbcomp how much space do you get with Dropbox?

I do have full size jpg backups on my Flickr pro, but can only use that for jpgs and I'd like to upload raw files, dng and tiff scans, as well as all my other stuff

Retrieved my nas this morning, don't know what's happened to it but it won't stay on and I'm not relying on it any more, once I'm back up to date I will be removing the drives and binning it

 

[gaz1]

i have files going right back too 2000 that i have on hard drive back up, these files i cant lose as i have the only copy of them.

these are family photos and more so as i was a single parent, i have never used raid

dropbox is as big as you like if you pay for it however one big advantage store anything on it weather programs films or data

https://www.dropbox.com/

theres also business as well

 

[MoreWellie]

I want to copy my good data to 2 locations then replace my internal drives, having just one copy makes me feel uneasy, especially as my good drive is identical to the failed one

I have 5 external hard drives that get used in rotation and one is always kept at my parents house (off site) this one gets swapped every now and again, the most recent is always in an outhouse (not ideal storage but at least it is unlikely to burn if the house does) All the drives are encrypted so if I do lose one it doesn't really matter as I cannot see the data being that valuable to anyone else that they would want to commit the time

 

[MoreWellie]

one failing of dropbox like services is that they online sync to your PC. If you were to get ransomware software on the PC then the dropbox files would be affected as well. You do get a 30 day version history with the standard account so there would be a period where you could recover but your offline disk copies are definitely safe.... unless you connect them to an infected PC

 

[rtbcomp]

I run dropbox manually rather than have it active all the time, so if the files in the local folder get encrypted the remote files won't - as long as I realise what's happened. If the encryption changes the filenames the remote files should still be safe as long as you catch them in the 30 day period mentioned above.

I have 5 external hard drives that get used in rotation and one is always kept at my parents house (off site) this one gets swapped every now and again, the most recent is always in an outhouse (not ideal storage but at least it is unlikely to burn if the house does) All the drives are encrypted so if I do lose one it doesn't really matter as I cannot see the data being that valuable to anyone else that they would want to commit the time

We drummed that into customers - rotate your disk sets and store off the premises. What we didn't bargain for was the customer who ran two businesses from 2 computers in the same office using the same software. He used the same floppies to back up both machines, and then when he came to restore he had No 1 company on both machines and No2 company nowhere to be seen.

Also label your disks - disks with no labels on are fair game for people to overwrite.

 

[Robotstar5]

When I was at Rover in the 80's, everything was backed up in the early hours of every day to an off-site secure server in Birmingham. Robot programs were backed up to a 3.5" floppy (that's all we had in those days ) which was kept near the machine, another copy was kept in the engineers office which was regularly uploaded to the company server for off-site storage.

Where I am now we have to apply for an FCR (facility change request) before doing any modifications, this generates a check/sign-off sheet to make sure everything is recorded and backed up safely.

 

[Robotstar5]

@rtbcompRetrieved my nas this morning, don't know what's happened to it but it won't stay on and I'm not relying on it any more, once I'm back up to date I will be removing the drives and binning it

I've got a spare Synology DS211j NAS drive with a couple of 1TB (I think) drives in if that's any good to you?.

 

[rikrobson]

I used to work in a data centre and one of the tasks was to swap tape backiups for custoners.
One customer had the same set of tapes for at keast 6 years. I doubt thay would have been any good if they were required

 

[galooph]

I use https://spideroak.com/personal/spideroak-one – I'm on the unlimited backup plan and I'm very happy with it.

 

[Kayos]

I've got a spare Synology DS211j NAS drive with a couple of 1TB (I think) drives in if that's any good to you?.

I may take you up on that

Just bought 3x3tb drives, currently cloning my good 2tb drive and the other 2 will be used as raid1 inside the pc (raid1 is the reason I still have a good copy)

Could have bought a 10tb hard drive for the same price, 10tb! That's insane

 

[skotl]

Mileage may vary, other opinions are available, etc., but having worked in IT for 30 years I would 100% favour an online solution rather than *just* relying on local drives.
Burglary, fire, carelessness can destroy local drives and so while I would certainly recommend using external drives for quick backups, for the money that it costs I would absolutely recommend an online backup solution. The other benefit to these solutions (which, with some effort, you can also do with local disks) is that most of them support multiple versions so if you accidentally overwrite a file and don't realise for a few weeks, you can still recover it.
Finally, most online backup solutions allow you to access your files from any PC / device.

To recommendations, I would *not* recommend the following:

• Mozy (not recommended)
• Carbonite (not recommended)
• Microsoft OneDrive (not recommended)

The first two were effective at saving files but were hopelessly unusable when trying to restore. Files of any decent size (just a few 10s of MB) would time out. I lost many files when I simply gave up trying to restore from both.
One Drive, even recent versions, would just silently stop backup up files. You didn't realise it wasn't working until you had a problem.

Heartily recommended:

• Sugarsync

Ostensibly a syncing tool, this backs up folders to an online store and then you can replicate these to other machines (if you regularly use a desktop at work and a laptop at home, for example) and keeps the last five versions.
I have some referral vouchers which can give a discount (and, full disclosure, give me extra space if used) which you're welcome to if you like - just IM me for info. There's a free / trial version, too, which you should definitely start with if you want to try it out.

 

[skotl]

Just re-checked Kayos' original post. Sugarsync probably isn't an option for 1.2TB as it would come in at a whacking $55 a month
So while fftopic: I hope my response above is useful for people with slightly less storage requirements.

 

[skotl]

https://www.google.com/settings/storage?hl=en_US

Google drive 1TB for £7.99 a month, 2TB for £15.99 a month

I always found google photos pretty seamless and IIRC drive allowance includes google photos also (you can set it to store the originals or let google "condense them")

Good point.
I have 100GB on sugarsync and only need "that little" space because I separately use Amazon Prime unlimited photo uploads to store my pics, which are around 1TB.