Online Backup Service Options
Lockergnome subscriber Troy Lokitz may have missed our online data backup segment, but his situation may be a bit out of the ordinary:
I currently use the HP MediaVault with mirrored 300gig hard drives to store my data (aside from DVD backups, the mirrored hard drives contain my working copies of my data). I’ve been investigating online backup services like allmydata / mozy / xdrive / carbonite and have had mixed experiences with them. I did some internet searches to see if there is a recent (within the last 6 months) review of online services. The reason I would want a recent one is they are all changing services / support options very quickly and reviews I’ve found are out of date and discuss issues with services that may no longer exist.
I’m looking for a service that will backup up to 50gigs of data on a scheduled / incremental basis from a NAS (mounted network drive). Also, i like the idea of having web-based access to the files/data. So far, I’ve found the following:
Xdrive: my favorite from a price/features perspective, but in the week I’ve been playing, there service has been HORRIBLE. I liked their product enough that I was going to buy it and found that every time I went to try and purchase an upgraded account, the website would tell me the account upgrade options are not accessible due to maintenance. I finally found a number to call on AOL (they bought xdrive) and the customer support desk told me that they are sorry but they are currently doing an upgrade and they have no idea how long it will take before I can purchase the service. Warning bells??
Carbonite: looks good, but doesn’t support mapped drive backups. restoring files can only be done by selecting files, not whole directories, which is a big downer.
Allmydata: looks good. I’m going to play with the trial, but not sure about the stability/strength of the company. I need to know the company won’t go out of business tomorrow. Nothing against allmydata, but I just don’t know much about them.
Mozy: doesn’t support mapped drives.
I know there are more companies out there and was hoping to get your feedback.
GoDaddy Web hosting plans are now more powerful than ever. Best of all, their plans start at just $3.95/month! No matter what plan you choose, your site receives 24/7 maintenance and protection in a world-class data center. Plus, as a listener of The Chris Pirillo Show, enter code CHRIS3 and get your .COM domain name for just $6.95 a year. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy!
14 Comments
The Chris Pirillo Show
November 10th, 2009
at 12:44am
[IMG] Chris Pirillo Video Ads in Web Video: Success! 4GB RAM in Windows? Online Backup Service Options 20 Reasons I?m Not Getting an iPhone Today GPS Tracking Device Upload Videos and Track Stats TSA: Transportation Security Administration? Upload Video Tool – 50% Discount Video: Help and How To
Creative Sage™ Tumblr Collection
November 10th, 2009
at 12:44am
Online Backup Service Options ~ Chris Pirillo
ilya
June 29th, 2007
at 9:02pm
I’m not sure about backing up data to the internet. I’m security anal, I would never do it.
If you want to host the backups your self, look into buffalo NAS (http://www.buffalotech.com/home). You can get multiple NAS devices that can backup from one nas to the other on a schedule. The buffalo terrastation can go up to 3 TB. On top of that, if you are geeky you can hack the firmware (linux) and replace it with a fully blown debian kernel (http://www.linkstationwiki.net/). That will give you much more flexibility (ssh access, ftp, www), even adding encryption to it.
The newer buffalo products has an added free service that allows you to access the files in your NAS from the internet (where ever you are).
I have two NAS from buffalo, really happy with it.
Matthew
June 29th, 2007
at 9:21pm
I regularly use Mozy and have no trouble using it with mapped drives. In fact its a good way around having to pay for additional PC accounts.
Spencer
June 29th, 2007
at 11:16pm
Chris – Mozy is definitely the best of the bunch. I tried X-Drive earlier in the year and couldn’t ever get it to work. Carbonite is a pile of dung and support is non-existent. Been using Mozy since April and have absolutely loved it. The professional version (MozyPro.com) has the mapped drive support you are looking for.
Good luck!
Spence
Jim
June 30th, 2007
at 4:24am
Carbonite does in fact allow you to restore entire directories and even entire drives if you had them selected to be backed up. It also allows you to restore folder/files to any location you want, not just where they were originally. I just had an OS meltdown and Carbonite worked very well getting my files back. I have more than 40 gigs backed up on Carbonite – definitely worth the $50 a year to me.
Joe Messman
June 30th, 2007
at 9:00am
idrive is the best online backup that I have used for my clients. It also offers mapped drive support and the interface is as granular or simple as you want. Go to idrive.com and check it out.
Michael Buckbee
June 30th, 2007
at 1:32pm
It’s still in beta, but people should seriously try
S3 Backup.
http://www.maluke.com/s3man/
It uses Amazon’s S3 storage space and is an order of magnitude less expensive as a result.
Rob V
July 1st, 2007
at 12:43pm
I really like Mozy, but I have a major concern about its claimed security. If you choose you own private key, and then restore files via a web download of a zip file, they come back to you encrypted. You then need a mozy-decrypt program (and your private key) to decrypt them. Now encrypted data should appear essentially random, and un-compressible, but if you look at restored versions of files with a lot of repeated characters in them (like, say, any Word doc, since they are full of binary padding…) you find loads of repeated chars in the encrypted output, which compresses quite a bit.
This I suspect would then be vulnerable to an attack to find your private key, and then an attacker could decrypt all you stuff…
I am not a cryptographer, but this does look really dodgy.
Chuck
July 2nd, 2007
at 6:37am
Chris-
We just released a network-drive ready version of Mozy Pro. (Not Mozy, Mozy Pro.) You can check it out at http://mozypro.com/
It’s a little more expensive than Mozy, but it will do exactly what you need it to with your NAS device.
Chuck
Lead Support Engineer
Mozy.com
Troy Lokitz
July 2nd, 2007
at 10:38am
Thanks for your comments! So far, Idrive seems like the best candidate. Mozy Pro is probably my REAL best option, but it’s more money than I wanted to spend.
Anyone else have any options I missed?
Thanks,
Troy
Bill Fulton
August 8th, 2007
at 2:14pm
You really should check out Data Lodge Pro. It supports mapped drives, Exchange Server, SQL Server, Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Also, there is a free 30 day trial (no credit card required). You can backup up to 100 GB of space free for 30 days.
Bill Fulton
August 8th, 2007
at 2:15pm
Oh and I forgot, the company is Seattle based.
gyan
July 15th, 2008
at 6:54pm
I’m in the same situation… this may be the ticket…
http://www.memeo.com/autobackupstd.php