I looked at this one:
However the upload speed from Switzerland is crazy low, and i have a very fast cablecom package.. It would take over 200 days to upload my 400gb of data.
Can anyone advice on a good service with good upload speeds?
Cheers
There are now a lot of reasonably priced backup services out there, I'm looking for a service to backup my entire computer automatically.
Get a friend and a strong strong password and use CrashPlan.
You then back up to each other.....data on each other's PCs and encrypted with that strong password.
I've chosen yours: sGmy2NQuSpbMSv6kePHkTcN5HmEFxp0fvAxzFrGYalxp910Mct 9FiRAxj9Bnbhp
Thanks - but anyone could guess that password in an instant. I think ill just stick with 1234.
It works for me!
That password contains no special characters! Sorry, it's rejected as VERY insecure!
As a starting point, you could look at one of the CH cloud services where you might be able to "walk in" with your hard drive and do a direct transfer of the 400gb onto one of their machines. From then on, it is just a question of changes and adding the new data. The regular Internet speeds should be good enough for that.
It would be worth a bit of research.
Why bother?
I just have a bunch of 3TB disks for backup.
Tom
Do it yourself backups..
On the MAC (same principle for other OS) -- Time machine, regular backups to external drive. Periodic disk image saved to external. External drive is rotated every month or so with one kept in the office.. Simple, cheap, two backups, one off site in case of theft/fire/disk failure.
Some things like backup should be simple, if you complicate them you tend to use them less.
I got an account with backblaze.com. Its like 4 USD per month and I got a 4 year plan. It wasn't as slow as i seemed at first, when you max out the settings in the app and leave it on 24/7 (the upload speeds are much faster during night time) it took about 20 days to upload my entire hard drive (around 400 GB).
It works flawlessly with mac and uploads any new files automatically in the background, just what i was looking for.
I use this in combination with time machine (for a quick restore if the computer breaks, has happened a couple of times).
I just dont fully trust physical media. My first time machine drive doesn't even work anymore, it has somehow self destructed just from sitting in a drawer for 5 years. Imagine 20 years.
Keeping a drive off site is just not practical - do you switch the drives every time you add another set of photos to your collection?
I probably trust less the 100s of cloud storage companies that have sprung up over the past couple of years I've seen many come and go, many are faceless one man operations run on unknown infrastructure etc etc. Many are very good. I'm sure it's fine if you've done your research.
I'm not totally anal about backups. I accept that in a disaster I may lose some data but for me that would not be life changing, it would be a pain in ass, no more. I switch the drives when i remember basically, roughly monthly, no science involved. So if the house exploded and the disk in the office was a month old, I might lose a few files.. But photos for example, last 1000 are in the apple cloud, they are also probably on my phone or SD card in camera, some maybe on facebook. So no drama.
I probably replace drives after about 5 years too, broken or not i would not trust a drive for 20 either!
As photos & Videos often take up the bulk of space in peoples drives consider backing up all your video to Youtube & All your Photos to Picasa.
I do & both are free.
the only backups that really work are those that are regular and automatic. i know few people who are technical and disciplined enough to have an effective DIY back-up system.
I used to work for a company that offered back up services and here is the one question you should answer to yourself about your approach, no matter which one: Have you ever actually done it and rolled one of your backups back?
Sounds banal, but you'd be surprised how many companies simply install some software and hit that big button and believe it if some software light is green.
And without buggy firmware/software.
I've got a Netgear Router with attached HD and that seems to place files all over the place and corrupt a few in the process.
I really don't trust it for an automatic backup so at the moment I manually back up my most important files manually to a couple of drives and a further one less regularly which I keep at another location.
I'm a techie in a bank, I've got backup and restore procedures up to my eyes!
And yes .. They don't always work first time.. But the backup of the backup of backups backup usually does
i'm an offender myself. once my backup was 6 months old because i was too lazy to manually back-up.
then i put in an automatic back-up, but got annoyed when it would take a few minutes on shutdown to back-up and so i put in a shortcut to bypass it. turns out, i probably bypass around 95% of the time.
this goes to Treverus' point, if you haven't got verified backups and verified recovery procedure, then you haven't really got a back-up at all.
That's why I use the manual backup. I've had to use it and it works.
Yep, I've done several test restores, not a complete restore though but enough to feel ok with using this service in combination with my time machine backup. The company also encourages users to do regular test restores - they seem to stand by their service.
I want to keep my videos in their original format and with 40 K pictures Picasa isn't practical. Also the security isn't sufficient, anyone who gets access to your email can restore a password from both picasa and youtube. With Backblaze you have the option to enter a private encryption key, meaning that even if someone accessed your account they wouldnt be able to access the files. The encryption key can't be restored via email, if i forget it my files are gone.
A reason i picked this one is that they seem well funded, serious and are very transparent (they have a blog for example letting people know whats going on with the company). I cancelled another service (SOS online backup) since they had no transparency, their software was buggy and their customer service was terrible. I just couldn't trust them.
This is not my main back-up solution, its to have in combination with my time machine backup. A cheap insurance for a worst case scenario and another step to protect the 40.000 plus pictures and videos of my entire life I've got on my computer. Shit, loosing all that in a house fire or whatever would hurt more than all my other possessions combined.
CrashPlan has allowed me to restore for friends and family (both on my server and using the client on their "new" PC) and I've also got files on demand from their cloud plus done restores from the cloud too.
I do backup between a server and a NAS as well as pumping to the cloud. The cloud is my last resort....but it works.
If I did CrashPlan just between friends, it costs diskspace and nothing else. And as my friends and I trust each other, worst case scenarios would see us restoring files on each others' systems and accessing them that way.
Disk and tape are history.