Take Your Storage Online

[muk]

We put 7 online storage sites to the test to see how they compare.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/2007/10/17/take_your_storage_online/index.html

 

[SirBC]

My concern with backing up online is someone else getting their hands on my private information. I would want to ensure that my "stuff" is transferred over an encrypted connection, *and* also stored in an encrypted format so that even the company providing the offsite storage cannot peak inside my private information. Perhaps some or all of these companies provide this but I did not see it mentioned in the article.

 

[MattPenner]

I currently use Mozy. They encrypt all your data either with their own key or one you create so security is pretty good there.

My only complaint is that it seems really slow both in transfer rates and actual program usage. When I open Mozy to configure the settings or just simply look at the logs it literally takes 2-3 minutes just to open the program. I have no idea what it's doing but it apparently working hard at something. The logs are fairly sparse and it's hard to get a really good idea as to what was backed up in each session. Other than doing a trial run at a restore I don't have the confidence I get from standard backup packages.

Also, I have the slowest FIOS package from Verizon but I can still upload to the Internet at ~200k/sec. For some reason with Mozy I get far far less than that. Even with Mozy at it's highest priority it's quite a bit under what I would expect.

In my opinion Mozy is more of a nuisance than a help, but I haven't found anything much better so I still use it.

 

[sailer]

My concern with backing up online is someone else getting their hands on my private information.

I echo that concern. I do back ups to CDs and occasionally back up the entire hard drive to a second hard drive. If information goes to an off line site, then its there for any hacker around to get. Yes, hackers can get into my individual computer as well, but its far more efficient for the hacker to target a main storage site of a millions of people then it is to target millions of individual computers. Further, the main storage site is always on line and waiting for attacks, whereas my home computer is off line most of the time and demands a hacker to try to guess when I am on line. I've heard or read enough news stories of hackers raiding company's computers for credit card numbers, etc, that I don't want to put at risk what I don't have to. Besides, with hard drives so cheap, the cost of a hard drive would be less than paying some site to backup everything. You just have to remember to do it.

 

[michaelahess]

I've been using mozy since it was first out. I've got it on 6 of my personal pc's and a bunch of my friends/family pc's. I've used it to recover a bunch of stuff over time and never had a problem. It's very easy to use and I've had no real issues with it. I get around 300k up on my residential connection, 384k max and just over 1Mb up on my commercial account. Never had slowness or speed issues as posted above.

 

[jaguarskx]

My concern with backing up online is someone else getting their hands on my private information.

Ditto

 

[nhobo]

I currently use Mozy. They encrypt all your data either with their own key or one you create so security is pretty good there.

That's hardly reassuring ...

 

[lmivan]

And what about linux users?. Is there an online service that offers a client for linux or ssh/dav access?.

Regards, Ivan.

 

[randomizer]

I'd probably get <30kb/s upload speeds if I tried, not really worth the trouble. I think I would rather buy another hard drive and but it in a computer not connected to the internet and know that nobody can access my data unless they are in my house. Or just carry an external HDD with me

 

[labtroll]

I use both mozy and mozy pro. since beta, and I always use my own key. It is HIPAA compliant for security. High encryption and the data is encrypted BEFORE it's uploaded. If your concerned for security, you can use a super long key (a while paragraph of a book or hash a picture file, and just back it up physically (like on a CD))

I have all my clients of various fields, including medical on mozypro and have saved the day dozens of times.

On very important issue not mentioned is backing up large databases, like outlook mail, etc. (I know mozy is able to back up only the changes made to the outlook file and even exchange and sql databases which is a HUGE savings on bandwidth)

I found it very useful backing up all my digital photos. I have a server and RAID system in my home, but that still won't protect it from data corruption or house theft, fire... etc.

Mozy is a steal if you also look at other professional back up services that costs over hundreds for a few tens of GB.

I believe it works with MACs but not on sure on linux. (if you have PC in the house running mozy you can just cron the backup to PC =))