Speaking of files . . .
Backup is complicated to do well. It needs to be regular, preferably automagical, probably in multiple versions, and really, one of those versions should be offsite. But who has the time to arrange all that? Apple’s Time Machine takes care of the regular and automagical parts, but usually the Time Machine saves to an external hard drive, or perhaps to a drive attached to your wireless router (a la Time Capsule).
As broadband has become more widely available and reliable, and as the cost of storage has dropped, several companies have started providing secure, over-the-internet, automatic backup. I use a service called Backblaze, which is available for Mac and PC. It runs in the background, backs up my entire hard drive (plus the external drive where I keep my iTunes files), proceeding incrementally yet keeping 4 weeks of different versions of a particular file. You can access your files from any computer with a web browser. It’s a beautiful thing.
(Some people compare it to Dropbox, a service so awesome it will get a separate post at some point. Dropbox syncs a folder between multiple computers and a web server, so that you can access the same files anywhere. It also provides versioning–and now it has an iPhone interface! And, seriously, you should be using Dropbox. But the services have different emphases: use Dropbox so you’re not always e-mailing files to yourself or carrying flash drives. Use Backblaze to back up everything.)
Backblaze is pretty cheap, too, for the peace of mind: $5/month, or $50/year. And, until August 21, you get 15% off your first order. Just use the code: backtoschool
(Note: I use Backblaze as a paying customer. They didn’t give me any promotional considerations.)
How do you handle backup? Have a better service? Let us know in comments.
[from flickr user playerx, per a creative commons license]
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12 Responses to Backup for Back-to-School: 15% off Backblaze
Brian Croxall - August 13, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I use Backblaze as well, and I find it super simple and super adept at what it is doing. This is especially welcome since my Time Machine just had to get wiped a day ago.
Something to note for anyone new to online backup is that it will take a very long time to get your first backup complete. The estimate for my 500 GB hardrive in my iMac was 410 days when I started. I have a relatively slow DSL connection, admittedly, but transfer speeds are nowhere near those you get on any sort of physical connection.
George Williams - August 13, 2009 at 4:41 pm
My campus computer is an iMac, and I also use a MacBook. I have a backup system that’s okay but kind of ad hoc:
I keep essential files synced between the two computers across a FireWire cable using a software application called ChronoSync. If something happens to one or the other computer–which are seldom in the same physical location–I should be okay. (Knock wood.)
I use Apple’s built-in Time Machine software to back up each computer pretty regularly to a 1 TB external hard drive. I created 2 partitions on the hard drive, one for each computer.
Every semester or so, I burn a CD of essential files–should probably switch to DVD so I can get more data on one disk.
What I’d like to change about this (in my pony-riding, unicorn-loving world of the future in which money is no object):
Buy and install a bigger hard drive for the MacBook so I can mirror the data on my iMac. In other words, the 2 computers would be identical in terms of what’s on their drives.
Buy 2 500GB external hard drives.
Keep one in my campus office, connected to my iMac, storing data from Time Machine backups.
Keep one in my home office, connected to my MacBook, storing data from Time Machine backups.
Every Friday, swap the external hard drives’ locations.
Pay a monthly fee for an online storage service, just for good measure.
Hire the world’s best psychologist to cure me of my OCD. (Kidding!)
Natalie Houston - August 13, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I’ve been looking into online storage myself. Can anyone comment on Backblaze vs Mozy vs Jungledisk?
George Williams - August 13, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Wait… what?
Brian Croxall - August 13, 2009 at 10:20 pm
This is the second time that it’s happened too. The file that needs to get backed up is just too big for the space that is left on the TM. It shouldn’t ever happen, but it does.
I blame it on a large iPhoto library. And possibly VMware Fusion.
Julie Meloni - August 14, 2009 at 7:34 am
I can’t comment on Backblaze or Jungledisk (but I tweeted it, and know there are folks in my stream who can, so watch this space) but I went with Mozy. Paid my $46.90 for the year and selected the items I wanted to backup and everything went smoothly (took some time, and I only selected 2GB I wanted to encrypt and backup). Did a restore of selected items just to test, and it worked. I’m still going to do external drive backups, of course, but I feel confident in that $47 investment.
Bill Wolff - August 14, 2009 at 8:13 am
I really need a backup plan (yes, I know) and I’m wondering what the benefits are of having the backup on an external hard drive versus backing up online. I see that Backblaze has a 4MB file size limit. Julie, does Mozy have a limit? I can’t seem to find a FAQ on their web site (yes, it’s early for me). I guess one benefit of the external hard drive is that you can backup files of any size. Thanks for your help!
Bill Wolff - August 14, 2009 at 8:28 am
I finally found the Mozy FAQ page and an answer to my question. There is no file size limit for Mozy: “You can back up files of any type or size with only a few exceptions; OS-specific files, such as Pagefile and Prefetch files on Windows, cannot be backed up. And while some types of encryption are supported by MozyHome, MozyHome does not support incremental backups of encrypted file systems. In addition, the amount of data that you can backup is limited to the amount of space that you purchased.”
Backblaze has a 4MB limit and Jungledisk has a 5MB limit. Also, Mozy is having a “Get 2 GB absolutely free!” sale, and NewEgg is having a 15% off sale on internal, external, and laptop hard drives (promo code: HDDSALE15).
Julie Meloni - August 14, 2009 at 8:47 am
Yep, I paid for the privilege of “truly unlimited backup for your home computer with no size restrictions” from Mozy.
KF - August 14, 2009 at 11:05 am
Thanks for this post and discussion. I’ve never suffered a catastrophic data loss, but I’ve had enough friends who have (most recently, a colleague whose completely un-backed-up laptop was stolen from her desk drawer) that I’ve become utterly paranoid about it. I’ve got an iMac at school that backs up to an external drive via Time Machine, and that syncs my documents via a paid Dropbox account to my home iMac and my laptop, both of which back up to a Time Capsule at home. The home iMac also backs up via MobileMe’s Backup, but… there’s a part of me that’s been hoping that I’d never have reason to access that remote backup, because I can’t say I’ve got a huge degree of confidence in it. And while the Time Machine backups have proven mostly reliable (at least lately; I did go through a period of having to reformat the Time Capsule repeatedly because the sparse disk image kept getting corrupted), the added layer of safety in having a remote backup is important to me. Because say someone got my keys and managed to steal all my hardware. (I know…) Or say both home and office go up in flames. (Shut up. They’re less than a mile apart; it could happen.) I want to know that my data’s safe somewhere, even if all the local instances of it suddenly evaporate.
Which is to say that $42.50 for an introductory year’s worth of Backblaze seems like a good thing to me. Thanks, Jason.
Nadya - August 14, 2009 at 6:58 pm
If you use Windows you can try CloudBerry Backup for Amazon S3 with friendly user interface, strong data encryption and scheduling capabilities. It is free for education. You will have to pay only tiny Amazon S3 monthly fees for data storage.
William Patrick Wend - August 17, 2009 at 9:11 am
Every Sunday I do a backup of my home computers to external storage devices. I do this manually because I am uncomfortable with a program doing this (and I’ve never run into a solid solution in Linux anyway) because it might miss something. Yes, that might be a bit anal but it lets me sleep better at night. I keep these backups in a ready to go bag in case of emergency/disaster along with my parent’s backup that I do every month or so.
I’d love to also backup to an Online source like Amazon’s S3 service, but just haven’t looked into it much yet.