You will remember that last week, I published a huge blog post on the topic of Online Backups, and mentioned here and there that I had a survey that I was conducting about how people backed up online. Well, It’s time to let that survey into the wild, with a grand total of 25 people taking it.

This question was designed to weed out the people who didn’t actually back up, so that I wouldn’t get a whole lot of useless data later. However, this useless data issue did come up, but not to the extent that it might have.

When somebody said if they backed up or not, I asked them to give a reason. The general reason that people gave was that they are too lazy, something that I don’t feel is an issue with backing up any more, what with Time Machine and the online services mentioned in my previous article. Just set them and forget them.

This data actually quite surprised me, as I never imagined that so many people would be using online backup services. While, predictably, the majority of people use a harddrive, there is a significant number of people who use the likes of Mozy and Backblaze. It should be noted that the people who marked “Other” were referring to the likes of Blu-Ray disks, DVDs and homebuilt servers. I should have thought of including them.

However, once we take a look at this data, things get starkly different. Out of the 11 people to said that they use Online Services for backup, only 4 of them said that this was their favorite method, and looking over the raw data, only two of these people were people who also selected the harddrive option. Not looking so great for the online services now! Other again referrers to homebrew servers and the like.

Not much commentary that can be done on this graph, to be honest, except that most people seem to have a LOT more external harddrive space then I do. I am impressed!

As we can see on this graph, Amazon S3 is the preferred method of online backup. (I’m discounting Dropbox, of course, as it is not technically a backup suite. However, I stuck it in there so everybody wouldn’t click “Other”. Interestingly, almost everybody who said that they used Dropbox also said that they used Amazon S3, further enforcing it’s popularity.

Amazon S3 wins again!

You may view the raw data for this survey at Google Docs.
Thanks to all those who took part!

Tags: backblaze, backup, dropbox, mozy, Online, Survey

This is part 1 of a larger article on Online Backup systems. In this part, I cover the different companies that I have tried out along with one or two that I have not. The second part of this series will be based around a survey that I am running about online backup systems. If you backup at all, online or offline, PLEASE fill this anonymous survey out so that I can get more data points. Thanks!

Recently, I have become more and more interested in the possibilities presented to me by online backup services. Places like Dropbox, Backblaze and Mozy offer huge (and often limitless) amounts of harddrive space in a building somewhere on the planet protected by armed forces and Minority Report-esque security features. However, for every advantage to using online backup, there is most likely a disadvantage. In Backblaze’s case, for instance, their datacenter, and thus, your datacenter, is located in San Fransisco, which means that tomorrow it’s probably going to be hit by an earthquake or something. Even though you can backup anywhere there is an internet connection, it’s gonna take a LONG time to get that first backup out of the way. (I’m 7 days into my first backup, and have uploaded about 42GB so far. Thankfully in the future Backblaze, the service that I am using, will only backup files that change. It should be noted, however, that these speed problems are likely not the fault of the backup provider, and more the fault of Vodafone and Comreg who are a bunch of incompetents when it comes to getting what speed broadband you are buying correct.)

“So”, you might say. “Why bother with this online backup rubbish? I have my harddrive sitting here next to me, which can do in minutes what might take days to do online.”

Let’s get something clear. Online backup should not be done, in my opinion, on it’s own. It should be supplementing a hard backup that you do every day at home, with a harddrive somewhere in your house. For Mac, this is redonkulously easy to set up, with the wonderful TimeMachine. Mac users simply have NO excuse not to go dig up an old external harddrive (or get a nice cheap one, places like Reads sell 1TB worth of delicious harddrive space for about €99) and just either leave it connected to your home computer 24/7, or just plug it into your laptop whenever you are at your desk. For Windows users, you will find a similer, perfectly capable backup system built into Windows 7. Online backup should be used for when you are out and about and accidentally delete a small number of files, or in case your house burns down in some horrendous oven accident, taking your harddrive backup with it. (Speaking of which, you did remember to turn the gas off, right? Better go check) However, the scope of this article does not include offline backup, and my good friend @SirJolt has written a pretty large article on this just today on the Komplett blog.

Mozy

The first of the lot I tried using was Mozy. I used it pretty much for two years solid, but never needed to use it to restore anything of great importance, as I was on the free account, and only used it to backup school essays and such. Nonetheless, I somehow have used 1.4 GB on it. Like all the online backup programs, you install a tiny little menubar application which just does it’s job in the background. However, it has a pretty low uptake among people who know lots about this subject, with a survey I carried out only showing 5% of respondents saying that they used it. Some complaints that can be found online are that the application (available both for Mac and PC) just sort of gunks up the system, makes everything run slow and tends to crash. I never suffered from any of these things, but I wasn’t backing up a huge amount of data, so I think that if you want some free backup space, go grab their 2gb offer for free, as it did the business for me. If you want to do a large amount of backing up, however, they may not be the best choice. Christopher Breen of PC world talks about some of the issues that he had in his PC World article. Another thing that I should mention is that Mozy won’t post your data to you on a harddrive, should you need it. They insist on sending you rather expensive DVDs or making you download everything. Which would take a while, I would imagine. However, as I said, Mozy are good, in my experience, for keeping an extra safe backup of those little important files. And remember that Mozy only ever backs up files that have been changed, meaning that after the first backup, everything SHOULD be nice and zippy, so long as you don’t fall foul of one of the weird bugs which will make your computer slow to a crawl. A year worth of unlimited Mozy backup runs you $54.45 per year.

Dropbox

Dropbox was the most picked online backup option, despite the fact that technically it doesn’t offer backups. Dropbox is basically a file synchronization service. You get a little folder in your Home directory (for Mac users, I suppose it is a network folder on Windows) called “Dropbox” and you just drop files in there. Instantly, all the other computers linked to your account download that file. It’s wonderful for what it does, again giving you 2GB for free. I use it a lot, again for school files. There is something just wonderful in knowing that no matter what computer in my house I write an essay on, it will instantly be on every single one of the other computers as well, as if by magic. It works stunningly fast, and has never once broken for me. It’s a real setup and go. However, can it be considered a backup solution? I don’t think so. Due to it’s synchronization backbone, once you delete a file on your computer (or it is deleted by a little kid who has run riot in your office) it deletes from the service as well. Not really a good backup solution, if you ask me. However, as I have stated in the past, Dropbox is basically what Apple’s MobileMe iDisk wants to be. iDisk constantly breaks, doesn’t sync and is generally clunky. Dropbox, on the other hand, is pretty much perfect in every way. If file synchronization is your deal, get a free Dropbox account, but I wouldn’t use it for any important files that you just HAVE to have backed up. While the first 2GB are free on Dropbox, a 50GB account will run you $99 per year, with a 100GB account costing $199, which means that per GB, you are paying $1 extra dollar for your second 50GB. Which is odd. But anyways.

Backblaze

Backblaze is the service that I am using at the moment. As far as I can see, it mixes the simplicity of Dropbox with the backup ability of Mozy. The entire client side of this system is contained in one insanely simple preference pane, which can get quite advanced if you want too. Unlike Mozy, Backblaze just automatically backs everything up (except for a few files, but we will get back to those) unless you tell it too, which includes any external harddrives you connect, as well as any flash drives connected. Which is kind of nice. You also get more control in how you throttle your upload speed, something which is important if you are uploading 50+GB. You don’t after all, want your network to grind to a halt for a week as you back up! Backblaze chooses not to backup some files, such as the system files (Not really needed, as you likely still have your OS disk for if something horrible happened) and Application files (which means that you will have to track down copies of all your programs, which should not be too difficult. However, it does keep the application settings files, so that once you redownload the programs, they will be working as they always had.) Personally, I have also set it up to not backup my downloads folder, as there are often huge files in there that are deleted within a couple of days. I imagine that I would tell the other options not to back these up as well. Another issue that somebody may have with Backblaze is that it doesn’t keep copies of any files bigger then 4GB. It does, however, keep all old copies of each file for 30 days, which turns it in to a sort of online timemachine. One interesting question I haven’t yet been able to get an answer to (due to my backup not yet being fully finished) is if Backblaze backs up all accounts. I don’t see why it wouldn’t, but I have not yet gotten an answer from the company despite getting in contact with them several times. However, I don’t see why it wouldn’t, as I can see Backblaze running from all the accounts on my Mac. Again, like Mozy, once the HUGE first backup is complete, it only backs up files that have altered, meaning that everything is zippy. This includes your iPhoto library, which although it looks like one file, is actually a folder pretending to be a file. This means it will be just as zippy as everything else. Backblaze don’t offer any free account, but they have a 15 day trial account and it is cheaper then Mozy per year, coming out at a round $50 for an account.

Others

For users who are more willing to get their hands wet in the world of Online Backup, a service like JungleDisk may well end up much cheaper. It connects into an Amazon S3 account, which means that along with the $2-$3 you pay JungleDisk per month for the use of their backup software, you will be paying Amazon a certain amount per GB transfer, data stored and such. The pricing system is sort of complex, so I suggest that you check it out yourself. However, it comes with the happy note that it can also be used to sync your data with other computers, much like DropBox. It got a solid 10% of use in my survey, and people seem to be happy with the lower prices. However, it is not a simply set it and forget it service, and you have to deal with two companies instead of one.

Some of the other companies in the big bad world of Online Backup are Carbonite and iDrive, both chosen by about 5% of surveyed people, but I never have actually had the chance to try either of these services out, so I can’t really talk about them.

Winner

In the end, out of the services that I have tried out, Backblaze is the clear winner. Sure, it doesn’t back up system files, but those are so big that it would take you ages to download them anyways. May as well just reinstall the OS if it comes to that.

Many of the links here are referral links. However, none of the services above are paying me to write this article. Any extra backup space acquired by you signing up to these services using my link will be put to good use. Also, any mentions of the survey are correct as of the 10th of February 2010. Full details on the survey will be released in Part 2. Again, please fill out the anonymous survey to help me get more accurate data!

Tags: backblaze, backup, dropbox, mozy, Online