Offsite/online backup solutions

[Kubi]

Looking into offsite/online backup solutions. Any experiences?

Was looking into the Gobbler before pricing changes tomorrow, but after some thought the audio focus almost seems to be a liability rather than a feature.

Crashplan+ looking good so far.

Any real world experiences? THANKS!!!

[mikehalloran]

I heard a disturbing article on NPR a couple of weeks ago. It raised many concerns about cloud and backup sites hosted in other countries. You are subject to that country's laws, infrastructure and finances and this can cause problems. Although more of an issue with cloud than backup, it got me thinking.

I haven't really explored this yet but, at some point, I will. If the server farms are not in the USA, I will not interested.

[cowtothesky]

I am also looking to do this. I was looking into carbonite at $59/year. Still trying to decide what to go with. I have backup hd's, but if there is a fire, that doesn't really help much.

[rhythm_kitchen]

I've read this re user agreements about out of the USA and passed also. I have a Gobbler account personally but my gripe is going online as a privileged user.

My vote is to limit Gobbler to only session files you want to transfer. Don't use cloud storage.

There was an article about a guy getting kicked off Comcast for exceeding his upload restriction two months in a row.

Did any of you know there is a monthly upload quota? So only Business Class is practical on a hi-bandwidth link to back up all your sessions.

Or... dribble it up one month at a time.

[adrake]

I'm not sure if online storage is the best option. Of course it's practical, but sites can vanish from the web very fast, and then everything is deleted? This is far too risky for me! I thought I could get some software, like Roxio or Acronis to make my backups. Anyone made experience with these?

[charlesparente]

Kubi:

I've used CrashPlan+ for 1.5 years for both my machines (my music MacPro and my personal MacBook) and my wife's MB Air) and it's been seamless.
I only use the online (offsite) portion of CrashPlan--I don't use it to back up to a local external HD (use SuperDuper for that...)

Very slick piece of kit.
And it sure is getting more popular. Has versioning built into it, so you can navigate to previous days/weeks/months etc. of data if needed.

However, I'm not backing up my music disc (the one DP is recording its files to/bouncing audio to) on a continuous basis. I'm not brave enough to try that.
I have it setup to backup once a day, in the middle of the night.

Depending on how much data you have to backup, the initial backup could take a long time!
Mine took a few days.
But the incremental backups are much shorter.

One lesson learned the hard way---if you're using an iphone or iPad for internet tethering, make damn sure that CrashPlan is not backing up during those times!!

You will eat up your monthly data allowance very quickly, because CrashPlan is working even if the desktop CrashPlan application (the 'front end' to the CrashPlan service) itself is shut down. So be very aware of the backup time settings you created!!

You can set it to backup continuously, or set various times/days of the week to do its backup.

-- Charles

[bralston]

The general thought is:


1. SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner for Identical Local Disk-to-Disk clones.
2. Chronosync for scheduled copies of folders (local)...to another disk...can also make clones though.
3. Crashplan+/CrashplanPRO, Backblaze for online/off-site backup.
4. Gobbler is great and I use it myself...great for collaborating with others online too. But...in general I use it to back-up my DP sessions...not my computer as a whole. I leave that to other services which also back up DP session.

Yes...there are MULTIPLE layers of backup.

Carbonite is great EXCEPT it is limited to the main internal drives only...so if your audio files or other files reside on external drives or eSATA, etc...it won't see them. Good choice for a laptop...but other than that, limited for guys like us in Pro Audio world.

Backblaze also has a limitation that no file over 9GB in size gets backed up. So..for large video files...it is not good. So...that leaves Crashplan+ Unlimited as best option. They now say if you are a business you have to use CrashplanPRO...and not Crashplan+. But PRO has some limitations different from +, including not allowing a seed drive like + will allow. So...one's mileage may vary.

[mikehalloran]

>The general thought is:<

Not among any of the IT and network admins I know. Backup systems that cannot save and restore incrementally are useless if data preservation is the goal.

Like they, I have little use for cloning for backups. Too easy to make mistakes and CCC isn't picky about the quality of the drive. The worst part is that, many times to diagnose and fix a problem, you really want to go back to the last version of a single file or program - say 9 days ago and restore that version including all of the associated files. Time Machine can do that.

Time Machine is foolproof and, in OS 10.8, you can rotate through multiple backups automatically. TM is picky and, if the hard drive has problems, it will give you validation error messages. You can still clone the backup to a new drive - ok CCC has some use but I use TechToolPro 6. These drives will pass a general SMART test but a detailed report reveals problems (fortunately, Seagate and WD will replace under warranty with a detailed SMART report).

I would still feel better with a domestic off-site backup I could trust. iCloud is expensive and not quite ready for prime time, IMO. If it functioned like TM and was around $100 a year for as much as I need, I'd be there.

[Music4dw]

Had the crashplan family plan for 3 years and just renewed for another 4. This coupled with SuperDuper for cloning and a time capsule as well. When I signed up, all their systems were in MN - I assume that's still the case. Multi layer is best. I've used each one with success on various restore scenarios.

[mikehalloran]

Had the crashplan family plan for 3 years and just renewed for another 4. This coupled with SuperDuper for cloning and a time capsule as well. When I signed up, all their systems were in MN - I assume that's still the case. Multi layer is best. I've used each one with success on various restore scenarios.

$6 per month looks pretty good. If it works well with Time Machine, might be what I am looking for.

[Kubi]

Just signed up for the Gobbler at 50% off (valid until tomorrow, Dec 2.) I do like the focus on audio... And 120GB for $75/yr, not bad.

[mikehalloran]

The reason for offline storage is if there were a fire or burglary or some such where my two Time Machine backups would be unusable. I would want to restore my system completely.

150G storage is a small fraction of what I need.

[Kubi]

My personal reason for offline storage is being able to restore projects I'm being paid good money for. For me it's liability protection, more than anything else.

As offsite backup for my system I have a hard drive stashed at a friend's house with a complete clone of everything that I update about once or twice a year. Between that and my local clones it's about as safe as I feel makes sense. I also keep one of my local clones hidden quite well, so it would really only be gone in case of a fire.

One question: Personally, until I have hard-drive like speeds on upload, can't see how I'd want to try to replicate my complete system via the internet. That's some 2-3TB worth of data, easy. How did you transfer your whole system into the cloud?

[mikehalloran]

>How did you transfer your whole system into the cloud?<

Slowly in the background. It's not an issue.

My data is important to me whether someone has paid me for the sessions or not.

[Music4dw]

Another thing you can do with CrashPlan - for free, you don't have to backup in their cloud and pay the $49 annual fee for unlimited space - is back up to a friends house for free. Just load up the free client (with ads) on each system and configure them to talk to each other and schedule the backups.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/r ... _computers

If there's a lot of data, you can also back it up locally and then take the drive over to the other person's house and associate it to with your system and at that point only deltas will copy over the network.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/h ... ed_archive

And if you really want to be safe, you can automatically back up to multiple destinations, local drive, friends house, paid cloud service.