Backup online or not

[tucker61]

How do people backup?
Which service do you use?
Anyone use vstuff?
Does it do full backup or incremental?
How long would it take as I am on 10 meg and have approx 12 gb to backup

I curently have a weekly backup to external hard drive, but want to start backing up online. Current backup includes all windows system files(windows 7) and is approx 250 gb, not sure how to reduce this to certain File types

[Dai]

Why would you want to backup online?

If you already have a scheduled backup routine in place to local storage I'm puzzled as to why a domestic user would want more. Ideally I would suggest a copy of your backup archive on a second disk removed from the premises to guard against loss from fire or flood but otherwise I see no gain in spending hours pushing your data up a slow upload pipe.

[Kymmy]

Online backup is tediously slow, the vstuff option even slower.. Remember that you only have 500Kb upstream

I'd personally keep the hdd (or even get a 16 usb dongle) and run something like ALLWAY SYNC (http://www.allwaysync.com/)... Just plug in and it backs up everything that you told it to automatically.. (will copy only changed files)

[Jon T]

Allway sync is very good, word of warning though, the free version has a very low limit on the total size of data it will sync, after that is start displaying messages to the effect of "your usage is not consistent with home usage".

[TheDon]

Why would you want to backup online?

http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/4782/housefire1m.jpg

What's the point of backing up if you're not covered for all eventualities? If your data is backed up in the same building as your working copy then it's NOT backed up.

I use dropbox to not just back up but to sync my important files across a few pcs, and my important photos are all backed up to my own server, which itself is backed up by the provider.

There's a phrase in the industry, if data doesn't exist in 3 locations it doesn't exist at all. That goes for home use as well. You might think it's overkill, but it's the only way to be sure.

[Hugh]

I agree with TheDon - I have a 500GB USB Hard Drive, which I do incremental backups on, and take to my M-i-Ls after the backup is done, a 16GB USB stick which has copies of photos and documents, a pocket Samsung (http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/10852148/Samsung-S1-Mini-HXSU012BA-120GB-1-8-USB2-0-External-Hard-Drive-Wine-Red/Product.html?&_$ja=tsid:11518%7Ccc:%7Cprd:10852148%7Ccat:Hard+Dr ives)120GB which has all my music, photos, and files, and an online backup of photos and documents (which I upload at work, with up speeds of approx 60Mb/s).

Call me paranoid, but it works for me.

[jcw00]

If data doesn't exist in 3 locations it doesn't exist at all..

As taken from last weeks The Gadget Show, which carried the issue of on-line backup. See the video at http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/other/backing-up-data

Also some insurance companies don't recognise downloaded music, so lose your computer, and you lose all of your music.

I use to use BT’s on-line backup with ISDN-2, it would only send the changed content of each file. So a 50Mb Outlook file, might mean that only 0.25Mb had change and wouldn’t send the complete file.

[Dai]

What's the point of backing up if you're not covered for all eventualities? If your data is backed up in the same building as your working copy then it's NOT backed up.


Erm..

"Ideally I would suggest a copy of your backup archive on a second disk removed from the premises to guard against loss from fire or flood"

[TheDon]

As taken from last weeks The Gadget Show, which carried the issue of on-line backup. See the video at http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/other/backing-up-data

Ohh didn't see that, very good segment though. It really is gospel in the industry though, I've had to drill the 3 locations into many a company because they think their raid array is adequate back up (when it's not back up at all!) and when you tell them it's not they just say "well we'll mirror it then!" and just want to buy in storage to do that. It's hard to get people to realise just how valuable their data is and to get them to start treating it as such.

Erm..

"Ideally I would suggest a copy of your backup archive on a second disk removed from the premises to guard against loss from fire or flood"

Yeah but how often are you actually going to do that? Most people wouldn't bother to do it more than monthly, and a great deal would do it once, then go "cba with that" and never bother again and it'll be stuck forever on the todo list.

Online backup is great because it's fully automated, set and forget. Sure the first time may take a while, but after that if you're doing incremental backups the speed isn't going to be an issue.

Any backup system has to be easy and convenient. Online backup is the only way to do offsite backup in an easy and convenient manner. It's something that will take most people half an hour to set up, and they're protected then without ever touching it again. If they're backing up to disk and moving that offsite they'll quickly lose interest in it, until they need it.

[Dai]

Any backup system has to be easy and convenient. Online backup is the only way to do offsite backup in an easy and convenient manner. It's something that will take most people half an hour to set up, and they're protected then without ever touching it again. If they're backing up to disk and moving that offsite they'll quickly lose interest in it, until they need it.

yep, a valid point indeed. I've lost track of the number of clients that have called me about data recovery after the event and have not continued to make regular backups.

Automated is a strong argument and if the only way to achieve that is on-line then I'll admit you have a convincing case.