Online backup recommendations

arad85

arad85

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Andy
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I'm looking at online backup solutions. The requirements are:
  • Cheap (i.e. cost of couple of pints of beer a month)
  • Reasonable cost of several hundreds of GB - i.e. unlimited storage
  • Automated - runs in the background syncing files
  • Can download folders, not just individual files
  • No need of dropbox style syncing - I'm after a backup solution, not a syncing solution

Best I've found so far is LiveDrive (http://www.livedrive.com/) @ £5/month unlimited and I am trialling it now (14 days free). I've also found My Hub (http://my-hub.co.uk/) which is cheaper at £3/month, but it's backed by Carphone Warehouse - I'm just worried it isn't their core business...

Anyone got any other suggestions? I'm on fibre with unlimited bandwidth so....
 
My 520Gb with amazon glacier costs me £4 a month. I use cloudberry as the backup tool which costs £30 or so, but I trust amazon compared to other systems.

Check out glacier, one account, unlimited machines .5p per Gb I think.
 
Have a look at crashplan. Backs up automatically in background. Currently have 600gb backed up. Quite cheap too
 
This thread looks interesting - I paid for 100Gb of Dropbox which I am using as backup as well as the sync facility between pc, laptop, work pc (selective folder sync) and iDevices. Not going to pay again after the year is up as I only really need about 5gb of 'sync' the rest can be backed up in other less expensive ways.

Interested in glacier - but despite the fact I currently have stuff in the cloud, I am still concerned with the data security of entrusting my data with a 3rd party.

Do any of the solutions mentioned already offer any form of encryption to the data?

What are you reasonings behind wanting this over a portable external drive that can be stored offsite andy ? Other than convenience I suppose :shrug:
 
Livedrive - what do you make of this in their t&cs ?


Some services, including the Livedrive Backup and Livedrive Pro Suite package are sold on a per-computer basis and include unlimited data backup for that computer. You are only permitted to backup data stored on a) internal hard drives of that computer, b) externally connected drives, such as USB drives, connected to that computer or c) NAS storage devices attached to that computer. Backing up of NAS storage devices may incur an extra charge on some packages.

There is a limit of 2TB for any single external drive including NAS devices and USB drives.

With the exception of our business service, services that include Livedrive Backup are not to be used for archiving. You must at all times hold an original copy of the data in the original location on the system it was backed up from. If you delete files from your computer that have been backed up we will remove the corresponding backup from our servers.

You must at all times run the Livedrive software on any computer that is being backed up and you must ensure this computer connects to the Internet at least once every 30 days. Livedrive will remove backups for computers that have not connected to the service for 30 days.

If you wish to restore data backed up onto our servers we may require up to 72 hours notice. Whilst ordinarily we would expect your data to be available for restore immediately, we reserve the right to archive data in facilities where it may not be available for immediate access.
 
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Glacier is encrypted.

Glacier and any online backup is a worst case scenario, it means I have to trust the company and know they will be Herr in x number of years. There attempts of cheap options, are they just resellers, own servers or what?

Most plans are single computers and they do try and not get caught out by people backing up NAS or other computers via mapped drives. So if you have a NAS or multiple computers, watch out.
 
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You could look at DropBox.

Your first 2Gb is free, and it will share across multiple machines. So if you have a laptop and a desktop, both can see the items backed up. Plus you have the ability to share items with other people if you want.

If 2Gb isn't enough, then 100Gb costs about £5.00/month.
 
If you have a Hotmail account then you have a FREE backup in the form of SkyDrive which I have been using for about 2 years now.

I got 25GB free and can extend that for a small annual payment of £6.00 a year for a further 20GB, £16.00 a year for a further 50GB or £32.00 a year for a further 100GB.

And of course Hotmail has been around for a long time.

If you don't have a Hotmail account then you get a free 7GB upon opening one and the above tariffs still apply.

.
 
Chappers said:
You could look at DropBox.

Your first 2Gb is free, and it will share across multiple machines. So if you have a laptop and a desktop, both can see the items backed up. Plus you have the ability to share items with other people if you want.

If 2Gb isn't enough, then 100Gb costs about £5.00/month.
Click to expand...

Have you read the whole of the original post ???
 
bl0at3r said:
Have you read the whole of the original post ???
Click to expand...

Yes and SkyDrive would seem to meet most of his requirements apart from the syncing , which I admit I don't know much about - but I do know that Arad's computer knowledge is much greater then mine so don't doubt he could sort that out - as for the rest SkyDrive does seem to meet all his requirements.

.
 
I have the original livedrive £10 a month option. I use that for ftp back up exclusively. The ftp didn't work for ages. Livedrive did nothing about it for months and months and months. They finally fixed it a couple of months ago. Support is poor and slow to respond most of the time. I wouldn't put anything on there I didn't want to risk losing or not get backed up.

I use idrive for mac client backup. That's got a limit of 500GB though. I rescued an entire G5 from it last year so I know it works. If it weren't for Virgin's pesky traffic shaping I would have got it back in days instead of weeks. Support is better.

I tend to hear good things about crashplan. That's got an unlimited option for $12 a month for 2 or more computers or $5 a month for one.
 
Thanks. Will take a more detailed look at crash plan it looks cheaper and possibly better than live drive. Glacier has always put me off with their pricing. I'd rather pay a fixed amount for unlimited than a per GB charge - I guess that's just me. Pricing needs to be unlimited and single PC isn't a problem - everything is backed up centrally so...

The live drive ts and cs don't bother me Alan
 
petersmart said:
Yes and SkyDrive would seem to meet most of his requirements apart from the syncing
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And the fact I want hundreds of GB of online storage. My backup drive has 783GB used. Whilst I don't propose to upload all of that (it would take 3 weeks solid to upload), I reckon on half of it being online.
 
arad85 said:
And the fact I want hundreds of GB of online storage. My backup drive has 783GB used. Whilst I don't propose to upload all of that (it would take 3 weeks solid to upload), I reckon on half of it being online.
Click to expand...

Must admit the unlimited plan looks excellent as long as it really is unlimited and there's no throttling back on the upload and download speeds.

.
 
The crashplan unlimited is pretty good. Took a while to upload. But just does it in background. Can also do offsite backups to another pc or an external hdd with the software for duplicate backups.
 
Hmmm... An update.

Livedrive: terrible reviews everywhere, but I can max out my 16Mbit up connection and just uploads anything I ask it to. Crashplan: seems to be tetchy about uploading certain files (the first files I tried were virtual disk drives and they wouldn't upload) and I can only get 1/10th my connection speed used (I've checked I have the settings on network as unlimited). Backblaze: same as crashplan, very slow upload speeds.

So... Crashplan/Backblaze are out (US based servers causing the speed issues by the looks of it).
 
I can max the upload with idrive (5Mbit) and that is in the US.

Don't touch anything by F-secure or Steek. They have been involved in the one VM have been using and it is a shocker. Deletes peoples files as well as taking months to upload anything.

I think carbonite might be ok?
 
idrive = expensive for what I want (I'd probably be looking at their $15/month option).

Tried carbonite today - slloooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww uploads. Despite all the negative press, livedrive is working well for me at the moment.
 
Have you tried the slow ones at different times of the day? It's worth experimenting if you haven't already.

Livedrive does seem quite quick at any time. I wonder if they've got many customers left now!
 
Tried them at a couple of times yesterday. The problem is that at a few Mbits/sec it isn't a viable solution.

Yes, I've been reading up on Livedrive.....
 
I think I'm in love :o

BackUp Solutions. US based company, with an enterprise class datastore in the UK, take security seriously and is $9.95/month unlimited (yes, more expensive but see the next sentence). I'm redlining a 16Mbit up connection to their datacentre. Totally redlining it - my ping times to the first router I hit have gone from 12 to 40ms. If the first 15 minutes is anything to go by, I have a solution (after I figure out how to rate limit on the firewall - the software has no rate limiter in it and I'd like some bandwidth over the next few days for other stuff!).

http://www.backuphelp.com/ for anyone else who comes across this and is interested.
 
arad85 said:
I think I'm in love :o

BackUp Solutions. US based company, with an enterprise class datastore in the UK, take security seriously and is $9.95/month unlimited (yes, more expensive but see the next sentence). I'm redlining a 16Mbit up connection to their datacentre. Totally redlining it - my ping times to the first router I hit have gone from 12 to 40ms. If the first 15 minutes is anything to go by, I have a solution (after I figure out how to rate limit on the firewall - the software has no rate limiter in it and I'd like some bandwidth over the next few days for other stuff!).

http://www.backuphelp.com/ for anyone else who comes across this and is interested.
Click to expand...

Ooh. Sounds good. Will check them out :thumbs:
 
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