Posted by Jim Casteel on January 17, 2010 at 9:11 PM
When we had our lightroom class with Nat the topic came up of online backups. I knew that with some of the new storage options coming online that it wouldn't be long before I had a reliable option for online file preservation.
I only had 2 requirements for an online backup provider. Do it securely and do it cheap! After doing a lot of digging I found a place that does both. So I figured I would do a little bit of business pimping.
I found http://www.BackBlaze.com For $5 or less a month I get unlimited storage space on their servers. If everything here crashes I can logon with my account and get either a free download of my data or I can request disks for an additional fee.
My 400GB that I decided to backup is going to take 15 days to do the initial backup but then after that anything I add to my computer gets automatically backed up to their servers every night.
I hope this information will be helpful to the rest of you guys that want a affordable off-site backup solution.
BTW. I don't work for them, but have found several great articles about how they are using SATA arrays to keep down their storage costs vs everyone else and I think they are a solid service provider.
Posted by Jeremy Kessler on January 17, 2010 at 11:35 PM
Might have to look into this, although the upload time is a bit of a turnoff. It would be nice knowing that my files are always there.
Posted by Neil Corman on January 17, 2010 at 11:37 PM
Good information Jim.
Keep in mind some internet providers have a monthly limit on bandwidth. While some may just give you a call and inquire of your bandwidth usage, others could be more heavy handed. It looks like the first instance would be the main high usage, but if it is unlimited storage and you think you can put anything in online storage you have to consider your connectivity and limits which may exist.
Posted by Rick Dunn on January 18, 2010 at 12:04 PM
Another good option is Mozy - http://mozy.com/home/pricing/. I've been using them for over a year. Similar experience as Backblaze - the initial upload will take a while, but after that it's only uploading new files. I do the annual plan, so it works out to about $4.50 a month.
I have a RAID setup and multiple external backups, but it's a good idea to have something 'off-site' in the event of a fire or theft.
Posted by Brian Jackson on January 18, 2010 at 8:08 PM
Thanks for the link. The better one I have found but haven't tried is CrashPlan. The reason I say better is Mozy, Carbonite, and several other don't support backing up external drives such as external USB drives or NAS (Network shares). Looks like BackBlaze will do external drives but no NAS devices. CrashPlan does it all. I put everything on my NAS which is then replicated to another external USB drive. I then do a manual backup of of the NAS drive to another external USB drive and keep it off site about every month. I really don't have anything on my local drives so most of the online backups won't work for me.
Neil brings up a good point about the bandwidth limits. Most of these places will allow you to send a hard drive to them for the first backup, so a 500GB or 1 TB backup will only take a day or two instead of 2-3 weeks.
Posted by Jim Casteel on January 18, 2010 at 9:06 PM
Brian, if you set it up correctly you can mount your NAS as a folder on your HDD and Backblaze should back it up as attached storage.
Posted by Brian Jackson on January 18, 2010 at 9:52 PM
Brian, if you set it up correctly you can mount your NAS as a folder on your HDD and Backblaze should back it up as attached storage.
Wish it were that easy. No one that I know of has figured out how to do this with Mozy or Carbonite. You might be able to do it with Backblaze but they say they block it. They specifically put code in the backup programs to prevent this. They don't want one computer to map drives to 30 other computers and then only have to pay for the the computer backup. This would be very easy to hack in the Mac/Linux world, but most only run on Windoze. CrashPlan is the only one that supports it (NAS Shares) that I know of. And CrashPlan support Linux/Mac.
If you get it to work let me know. I'd be interested.
Discussion
6 repliesI only had 2 requirements for an online backup provider. Do it securely and do it cheap! After doing a lot of digging I found a place that does both. So I figured I would do a little bit of business pimping.
I found http://www.BackBlaze.com For $5 or less a month I get unlimited storage space on their servers. If everything here crashes I can logon with my account and get either a free download of my data or I can request disks for an additional fee.
My 400GB that I decided to backup is going to take 15 days to do the initial backup but then after that anything I add to my computer gets automatically backed up to their servers every night.
I hope this information will be helpful to the rest of you guys that want a affordable off-site backup solution.
BTW. I don't work for them, but have found several great articles about how they are using SATA arrays to keep down their storage costs vs everyone else and I think they are a solid service provider.
Keep in mind some internet providers have a monthly limit on bandwidth. While some may just give you a call and inquire of your bandwidth usage, others could be more heavy handed. It looks like the first instance would be the main high usage, but if it is unlimited storage and you think you can put anything in online storage you have to consider your connectivity and limits which may exist.
I have a RAID setup and multiple external backups, but it's a good idea to have something 'off-site' in the event of a fire or theft.
Neil brings up a good point about the bandwidth limits. Most of these places will allow you to send a hard drive to them for the first backup, so a 500GB or 1 TB backup will only take a day or two instead of 2-3 weeks.
Wish it were that easy. No one that I know of has figured out how to do this with Mozy or Carbonite. You might be able to do it with Backblaze but they say they block it. They specifically put code in the backup programs to prevent this. They don't want one computer to map drives to 30 other computers and then only have to pay for the the computer backup. This would be very easy to hack in the Mac/Linux world, but most only run on Windoze. CrashPlan is the only one that supports it (NAS Shares) that I know of. And CrashPlan support Linux/Mac.
If you get it to work let me know. I'd be interested.