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#1
 
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Online backup -
12-12-2005
, 08:03 AM
#2
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Has anyone used an online backup service that works well with Macintosh and is reasonably priced? Getting backups to offiste storage isn't always easy and in an area-wide disaster may not be sufficient. |
#3
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Most of your alternatives could be countered by: "You'd do better to burn a DVD or 2 and mail it to your aunt each month." For a medium size daily backup a DVD can't be beat. A small stack of rotating daily DVD-RWs, with a DVD-R set for weekly or monthly backups is cheaper and better an online backup. Imho online backup solutions are really ideally suited to *small* critical datasets (less than 100 MBs) that you sync daily. Sure .mac is not the cheapest in the lot, but you do get a rash of other services which may or may not be valuable. Plus I strongly advocate daily, or at least weekly backups for any sort of user with a remotely active business. For users with larger datasets, well beyond 100 MBs, say into the 5- 10GBs range then an online solution becomes quite impractical for the average soho/or midsize business using typical internet connections. Both in terms of transfer time which at average adsl upstream speads (<1MBit/sec -- 5GBs/10GBs would take a minimum of 11hrs/22hrs respectively to upload, and ISP cost... even a weekly backup amounts to up to 25GB-50GB upstream per month, while a daily backup (which would be running near continuously would amount ~110GB-220GB upstream even if you just did it on business days... both well beyond your average ADSL package. (I know a number of my clients pay around 100 - 200 bucks a month for less than 10GBs total transter.) Those online hosts with large spaces, like 5GBs and beyond, are really only suitable for 'archival' purposes, I'd recommend smaller home-office based FM consultants/contractors to consider using one to store backups of completed projects for clients for example... 5GBs will hold a lot of empty clones, documentation, etc... but you won't be moving that much data into and out of it on a regular basis... and there is the added benefit that you've got internet access to a clean clone anytime, anywhere. In other words, imho, a large online space is a good place to put a "backup" of something for long term storage yet keep it accessible... but I don't think its really suitable for regular backups of even modestly large files. best regards, Dave |
#4
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Actually, if your only concern is backup of FileMaker data, I think the ultimate way is to use a reputable FileMaker hosting service (I recommend oditech.com) because almost all of them perform daily automated backups of your databases, which you can download at any time via FTP. As a side benefit your database is automatically networked, so it's like getting FileMaker Server Advanced as part of the deal. Of course, they are much more expensive than shared Linux hosts. In defense of the hosting providers, I still think they are great for backing up key files. I use 7-Zip for compression (amazing compression rates!) and back up my important stuff there regularly. It's all handled nicely by a script that works each time I reboot my computer. It's an incremental backup so the actual sessions are quite reasonably short. The total files I have backed up account for about 3GB of space (compressed) which works out to about 10GB of actual data. (Yes, 7-Zip is THAT good!) My own backup strategy is that I have a dedicated PC which runs Retrospect Remote on all the computers in the home. This runs silently and unobtrusively, and automatically keeps older versions of files, etc. I also periodically use Drive Image 7 to "image" the startup volume, so I can quickly restore my system. (Retrospect doesn't "image" disks, so it's better suited for data backup.) The backup media is a 300GB disk connected via USB to the server, so it's easy to swap out if it gets full. So, between the boot disk images, the USB Retrospect drive (that can be grabbed in an instant), ODI Tech hosting (and backing up) my essential FileMaker files, and the network backup of my key stuff to my hosting provider, I think I've got it covered.  Bill "42" <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote in message news:MPG.1e0b543fbd0ef7c1989e05 (AT) shawnews (DOT) vf.shawcable.net... Most of your alternatives could be countered by: "You'd do better to burn a DVD or 2 and mail it to your aunt each month." For a medium size daily backup a DVD can't be beat. A small stack of rotating daily DVD-RWs, with a DVD-R set for weekly or monthly backups is cheaper and better an online backup. Imho online backup solutions are really ideally suited to *small* critical datasets (less than 100 MBs) that you sync daily. Sure .mac is not the cheapest in the lot, but you do get a rash of other services which may or may not be valuable. Plus I strongly advocate daily, or at least weekly backups for any sort of user with a remotely active business. For users with larger datasets, well beyond 100 MBs, say into the 5- 10GBs range then an online solution becomes quite impractical for the average soho/or midsize business using typical internet connections. Both in terms of transfer time which at average adsl upstream speads (<1MBit/sec -- 5GBs/10GBs would take a minimum of 11hrs/22hrs respectively to upload, and ISP cost... even a weekly backup amounts to up to 25GB-50GB upstream per month, while a daily backup (which would be running near continuously would amount ~110GB-220GB upstream even if you just did it on business days... both well beyond your average ADSL package. (I know a number of my clients pay around 100 - 200 bucks a month for less than 10GBs total transter.) Those online hosts with large spaces, like 5GBs and beyond, are really only suitable for 'archival' purposes, I'd recommend smaller home-office based FM consultants/contractors to consider using one to store backups of completed projects for clients for example... 5GBs will hold a lot of empty clones, documentation, etc... but you won't be moving that much data into and out of it on a regular basis... and there is the added benefit that you've got internet access to a clean clone anytime, anywhere. In other words, imho, a large online space is a good place to put a "backup" of something for long term storage yet keep it accessible... but I don't think its really suitable for regular backups of even modestly large files. best regards, Dave |
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