Offsite Backups

Here are the hard facts:

12,000 laptops are lost or stolen in airports every week,

One computer's hard drive crashes every 15 seconds,

Coffee, Kool-Aid, etc. gets spilled on the keyboard,

One in three laptops die in the first three years,

Your laptop gets dropped, or falls off a cart,

Burglary, fire, tornado, virus, human error...

...many of these things have happened to me - five or six times in the past 25 years I've had to restore all my programs and data files from scratch. But many more times, a single file got deleted, corrupted or changed, and I needed to recover a previous version of the file. So it's not a question of "IF"... but "WHEN" it will happen to YOU. Your insurance policy will only cover loss or damage of physical property, not intangible information. That's why you need to do frequent backups: your computer is replaceable, but your files are irreplaceable.

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According to the 3rd annual survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 92% of computer users still don't do regular backups, and 46% of people need to restore data every year: this means nearly one of every two of you, your friends, family and co-workers will lose data permanently. Work files? Gone. Photos? Gone. Music? Gone. These people don't backup their files because they never heard about doing backups, or it's too confusing, or they don't have the time... and then it's too late for data recovery. When all or some of your files get deleted or your hard drive crashes, what will you do? Start doing automatic offsite backups NOW, before those things happen!

Each of the offsite backup services below give you a "client" program that it does its thing automatically - you set it up once, and then forget about it. All offer encrypted file transfer and storage. Many support Macs as well as PCs. Some offer file sharing, and a few keep several old versions of your files. I have personally installed and tested several online backup programs, including all of those shown below. Read my reviews and see which one best meets your needs:

First, let's take a look at Mozy. Chances are you have a lot of important stuff on your computer like financial documents, email, digital photos, music and more. Unfortunately, computers are vulnerable to hard drive crashes, virus attacks, theft and natural disasters, which can erase everything in an instant. Sign up to get 2Gb of free online backup space - this might well be enough for your important documents, or get MozyHome with unlimited backup for just $4.95/month, $54.45/year or $103.95/2 years that will provide enough online backup space for your digital photos, mp3 music and even your videos. Mozy installs easily when you're logged in as a regular user and runs quietly in the background. Mozy has just announced a faster and improved service that provides dual backups: on their servers and on a backup drive on your computer or local network.

For businesses, get MozyPro for $3.95/month + $0.50/Gb for a desktop computer, or $6.95/month + $0.50/Gb for a server. With Mozy you simply accept the defaults of backing up your Documents, Pictures and Videos folders, your browser settings and email files; or you can select the files and folders to be backed up, then choose a backup schedule; and Mozy does the rest. Mozy offers: Open/locked file support, 448-bit Blowfish encryption for stored data, Retaining several previous versions of your files (in my opinion, this is the most important selling feature!), Detection of new and changed files, Backup of Outlook files, and Incremental backup after your full initial backup.

An Online Backup success story on Mozy's website: "The individuals who had stolen my computer didn't realize Mozy was backing up their photos and personal documents. I restored the files online, found their names and address, and turned the information over to police. Thanks to Mozy, I now have my computer back again." - Damian Zikakis, Michigan

Mozy installed right away without a hitch, in fact, when I started it up I thought something was wrong because it ran so quietly. I thought, "No wonder those thieves didn't notice anything!" Then I changed the default backup folders to my Agape-Biblia, CompuNerds, My Documents and a few items including my email folders and settings, all together about 1.2Gb, and I let it run. By bedtime it hadn't finished, so I shut down my computer and re-started Mozy the next morning. Total runtime was over 12 hours, but I had set it to only take 75% of my Internet bandwidth, so I figure it runs just about as fast as IDrive (see below). If you want an online backup system that's unobtrusive (you can even turn off the "Mozy Home is backing up your files" and "Mozy Home is finished" popups), then Mozy is the one to get.

(Just a quick suggestion: whatever online backup system you use, protect your files with a good mnemonic password, i.e., one that's easy to remember but difficult for others to guess, not a randomly-generated string of letters and numbers. The reason is that if you lose your computer and any DVD or USB-drive backups in a fire or natural disaster, you've also lost your password vault with its generated passwords that you can't possibly remember.)

Backblaze has a really funny demo on the home page of a young lady squirting barbeque lighter fluid on a notebook computer and setting it ablaze! (We don't recommend this as a way to test their online backup system, or anyone else's, though.) You can get a free 14-day demo account, then if you're happy with Backblaze sign up for the full account at $5/month or $50/year - none of that $4.95 or $4.99 silliness. You get Unlimited Backup: no size limit for your online storage. Backup Everything: Backblaze backs up everything on your computer except your operating system, applications, temporary files, or those over 4GB. Backup Continuously: Files change and Backblaze backs them up.

By default, Backblaze simply backs up all the time so you don't have to remember. But if you wish, you can schedule Backblaze to backup at a convenient time or only when you click "Backup Now". Backup External Drives: Use a USB or Firewire-connected drive for additional storage or backups? Backblaze will backup those too. Backup Windows and Mac: Backblaze backs up Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit, and Intel-based Mac OSX 10.4 and newer. Restoring: You can restore a single file, a folder, a set of random files, or all your files. Use any web browser to restore to a PC or a Mac. Restore Previous Versions: Backblaze keeps up to four weeks of file versions, so you can scroll back and pick any version to restore.

Backblaze just plain works: its straightforward, simple interface is a breeze to set up and run: just download and run the installer in three clicks, and it automatically locates all your photos, music, documents, and other irreplaceable files ? no matter where they are on your hard drive ? and compresses, securely encrypts and uploads them to the Backblaze remote datacenters. For ease of use, versioning and that nice round $5 number(!) I rate Backblaze right up there with Mozy.

IDrive is really great - it gives you 2Gb of free storage when you sign up. If you refer five or more friends, you get 10Gb free! A personal account that provides you 150Gb of storage costs just $4.95/month or $49.50/year (2 months free). The cost for business accounts vary by size. When you install IDrive, you must be logged in as a member of the Administrator group, and you must install it into "C:\IDrive". A default selection of most commonly backed up data - your Documents, Pictures, Videos and Email folders - is created with a random after-hours schedule, but you can customize the selection and schedule.

IDrive supports PCs and Macs. You can set it to Continuous Data Protection (CDP) that copies any new or changed files every 10 minutes, Synchronize that syncs your online storage to mirror your computer's hard drive, Time-Line Restore can recover a select set of files back to a specified point in time, Retrieve your data from any location, create and Manage Multiple Accounts from a single account via your web browser, Versioning that retains the last 30 versions of all backed up files at no additional charge for storage (in my opinion, this is the most important selling feature!), and much more. Because it offers Versioning, I rate this as one of the best offsite backups I've tested.

When I downloaded IDrive, all I saw on the download page was that it would run under Windows XP, Vista or Win 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. So I eagerly installed it into C:\Program Files while logged in to my regular user account, entering the admin password when prompted for it. No dice - it wouldn't start up. Next, I uninstalled and reinstalled it into my own user folder. Still no go. Finally, I went to the IDrive support web page and started a chat session, explaining what I did and what went wrong. The support guy replied that I had to be logged in as admin, right-click on the install module, select "Run as Administrator" and install it into C:\IDrive like it stated on the download page.

I hadn't seen that because it was "below the fold" on the download page, but when I went back and scrolled down, sure enough it was there! Just to be sure, I changed my regular user account to the admin group, followed his instructions and it worked! (You must be logged in as Admin to use the program, but I prefer the security of doing my day-to-day work logged in as a standard user.) Then I selected the folders I wanted to backup, about 1.2Gb, and let it run at full throttle. IDrive took just under 10 hours to do the initial full online backup, and the next morning it took just a few minutes to backup the 99.5Mb of files I had added or changed since the initial backup finished. The Versioning feature is essential if you want a real backup system, not just synchronizing the offsite backups with your current files.

PersonalBackup lets you either use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to upload your files to your own website, or back them up locally. You can use the default backup folders or select which folders you want to backup, and what file types (extensions) you want to include or exclude. The program is free, but if you choose the FTP online backup option, get yourself a website for under $4/month at iPower.com where I have my websites: they offer lots of free extras like personal website design systems, WordPress, autoresponders, MySQL, Joomla, Moodle and more.

If you're a "do it yourself" person, take a look at my backup *.bat files to use with PersonalBackup for doing daily (partial) and weekly (full) backups that automatically retain 4 weeks of daily backups. These files use PersonalBackup to backup your data on 3 different media - see Steps 4 and 5 in our AA 12-Step Plan where I show you how to use the free PersonalBackup program for doing local backups. But if you're not technically inclined, at least use one of the online backup programs listed here and let "the Cloud" do it for you.

With MyOtherDrive one account can backup multiple machines, unlike some other online backup sites. You can share photos and files, create private folders or collaborate with coworkers by copying files to another account, use online files for presentations and web pages, and access your files from anywhere using your web browser. To back up your personal or sensitive data, mark a folder as encrypted, and all files uploaded to it will be AES 128-bit encrypted. No one but you (not even MyOtherDrive employees) can access your encrypted files because encryption is performed on the client before the file is sent to the server. And it works with PCs, Macs and Linux-based machines using your web browser or MyOtherDrive's Java-based Desktop Client that works quite smoothly! (If MyOtherDrive won't work at first, you should de-install any old versions of Java and install the latest version from www.java.com.) You can have a free 2-Gigabyte account (ad-supported), or pay $4.99/month or $54.89/year for 100Gb of storage for the Pro plan, and $9.99/month or $109.89/year for 500Gb of storage for the Enterprise plan. All plans include unlimited bandwidth, unattended backups, file linking and a desktop client.

More than just keeping backups of your data, MyOtherDrive offers file and folder sharing - in fact, that's the default. When you tell others your user name and password, they have access to all the online files and folders except any folders you have encrypted. MyOtherDrive installed easily but didn't run at first, so I contacted tech support. A nice guy named John suggested that I uninstall Java and install the latest version - that worked! (Because it's written in Java, MyOtherDrive runs on PCs, Macs or Linux computers.) It ran quietly and flawlessly, initially backing up my 1.2Gb in about 12 hours, then each daily backup after that took just a couple minutes. Because of the added benefit of being able to backup multiple computers and share files with friends or coworkers, I rate MyOtherDrive as just a bit behind Mozy.

GlideOS combines features of an online backup system as well as a "virtual computer," allowing you to use it anywhere, on any computer running Windows, Mac, Linux, Android or Solaris operating systems. It has a full suite of productivity and collaboration applications. You get 20GB of storage for the free account that lets you create and administer up to six family member accounts including child accounts (but they may not provide the free account forever, as their website states). For $4.95/month or $49.95/year you can get a Premium account: 50Gb of storage for up to 25 users. It will run on most cellphones and smartphones as well. Both the free and Premium accounts are ad-free. You can also download their "Glide One" application for the PC, Mac, Linux, Android or Solaris operating systems and keep your online files in sync with your notebook, desktop or smartphone files. It can import files from Outlook, MobileMe, Windows Live (Hotmail), AOL, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, standard POP and IMAP email, Firefox and Thunderbird (using the *.ldif contact format), and some other Windows apps. It converts those file formats to its own formats when you "sync up" to the online server, and then back to Windows, Mac, etc. formats when you "sync down" to your computer.

GlideOS is an intriguing concept... if you can limit all your computer work to Glide's productivity and collaboration applications, because it doesn't backup any other applications. Many people, however, especially casual computer users, might find it quite enough for their needs. The fact that GlideOS gives you 20Gb free and that you can go from one device to another with your files always available (that is, if the Internet is available) are real pluses, so I would give it a B+.

DriveHQ offers you a wide array of services: not only a backup server, but also automatic folder synchronization, a secure file sharing server, FTP server, website server and email server. DriveHQ's free basic service gives you 1Gb. Paid plans cost $2.99/month for 3Gb, $7.99/month for 6Gb, and other plans are available. You can have group accounts, sub-accounts and group sharing and collaboration. You can have quick sharing with a URL link; a [your-name].drivehq.com website or your own domain name; advanced sharing with access control; or publish files and link to them from any other website or from an email message. This is much better than sending files as email attachments. You can share files of any size easily, and share folders for read-only access or read-write access. You can map your DriveHQ folder to a drive letter, which is better, larger and cheaper than a USB flash drive. With DriveHQ FileManager and the Desktop Express client, you don't need a USB drive, period. Unlike other Internet backups, DriveHQ FileManager and Desktop Express don't lock up your PC or applications, even if your network is down.

DriveHQ, GlideOS and MyOtherDrive are taking us into some higher forms of Cloud computing! - See our Dec. 5, 2009 issue of CN.Net-News on the "Cloud".

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