Online Backup

Friday, 24 November, 2006

I blogged last week about having a reliable backup routine for data on a PC. In this I mentioned that I have five copies of my data, including archives and offsite backup. Whilst it is relatively simple to set up a backup routine to another hard disk drive (internal or external, or indeed both!) using something like Second Copy or Mircosoft’s free SyncToy, offsite backup is a little more complicated. This would traditionally have been performed to a tape, which would have been taken away at night. People have more recently used CDs and DVDs and the new generation of BluRay discs.

There are two problems with this approach; the first one is actually remembering to do it, making sure there is a disc in the drive, and taking it offsite! The second is disc capacity. I have 40Gb of data which wont easily fit on a DVD (and I dont want to be sat at a PC slotting discs in and out).

The simplest method is actually online backup. This ranges from free space at places like Box.net through to the rather neat firefox extension called GSpace that allows you to dump files into free space within a GMail account. Ultimately though these are only of he order of 1-2Gb so suitable for some but not a total solution.

The cheapest of the online storage solutions is Carbonite (ny referral URL), offering unlimited space for $5 a month. This itself is great, but for me its the software the totally sells the solution. Operating as an extension within Windows explorer it simply monitors these directories and automatically backs up your data, compressed and encrypted, to Carbonite. You don’t have to think about it. And once its done the initial upload it simply copies file changes. The restoration of files is painfully simply, again using Windows Explorer to access your remote data and marking files you want to restore. All in all its a brilliant solution that I can heartily recommend.

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