I had a scare earlier in the summer, when a house down the street from me caught fire (see All Tweets Are Local). Thankfully, it was quickly contained and never spread but it was a stark reminder that I have a lot of important data in my home office, as you probably do too. When I travel, I’ll often take my external hard drive with me, which contains nightly backups from my desktop computer. This gives me some peace of mind but it’s a rather clunky solution that doesn’t work if I’m just out around town for the day. Better to add a remote backup service to automate the process of moving my important data off-site, in addition to backing it up locally.
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of companies offering remote backup services. Choosing one is an important commitment, not only from an ongoing cost standpoint but also because of the pain of changing backup systems after one is all set up. While choosing a system for myself, these were some of the features and criteria that I thought were important to compare:
- Storage capacity – This comes down to a choice between fixed and unlimited storage. I am somewhat suspicious of unlimited storage, because the company offering it must bet on how many people will use really large amounts of storage. If they miss their bet, they run the risk of having oversold their available capacity. I know how much storage I will need and am more comfortable with purchasing two or three times that much for my own use.
- Management software – All online services use some kind of client software (a program that runs at all times on your computer) to manage the backup process. This software needs to be well designed, easy to understand and play nicely with the rest of your computer’s software and operating system.
- Multi-computer licensing – Will you need to buy a separate license for each computer you want to back up? Many companies have a “family pack” that allows multiple computers to use the same license. Note that my research was limited to “home use”, rather than “office use” systems.
- Performance impact – Because the backup software is always running, it should have a minimal impact on the performance of your computer, both when it is idle and when it is performing backups. Since it is using your Internet connection to upload files, it should also have the ability to control its own bandwidth usage. Ideally, it will be able to sense when you are using you computer, minimizing it’s impact at those times and otherwise running at full throttle.
- Restoration process – Having 50 gigabytes of files stored online is great but what happens if you need to restore it all quickly? Some companies will burn your files to DVDs or an external hard disk and ship it to you, at an extra cost of course. It’s also worth noting if there is a web-based system for restoring files and whether it can be accessed from any online computer.
- Trial usage – It’s impossible to evaluate these systems just from reading about them. You have to run the software, back some files up, restore them again and generally slam the doors and kick the tires. Some companies offer a trial version of their full system for a limited time. Others give you a limited amount of storage (usually 2-3 GB) free forever. Either way, you should be able to give the system a thorough shakedown. Note that backing up large amounts of data online happens over many days or even weeks. So make sure that you can do a thorough test with a limited time trial.
- Strong encryption – There is all kinds of stuff on my computer, going back over many years. I don’t even remember much of it but I know that there is some that I wouldn’t want anyone else to see. All data that is stored online needs to be encrypted well and automatically.
- Support – In addition to formal support programs, I like to see forums or social help systems, where users can communicate directly with each other. Not only does this give you an idea of where the problem areas are within a system, it also relieves some of the burden on a company’s tech support staff. Also very important is complete and readable documentation.
- Company stability – Obviously, if they shut the doors, all of your stored data becomes worthless.
- Cost - Most of the systems I evaluated cost $40 – $60 per year. Variables were storage capacity and single versus multi-computer licenses.
And the winner is…
…not who I thought it would be. I had been looking pretty closely at Memopal, because their pricing includes up to 10 computers sharing a pool of 200 GB of storage, a model that would have worked well for me. However, while testing their 3 GB free offer for the past couple of weeks, my settings wouldn’t stay set and the web interface was balky. I just didn’t have the confidence to commit to them.
I am now on day 2 of a 15 day trial with Backblaze, watching it slowly upload over 72 GB of files. It won’t finish within the trial period but I can test their system pretty thoroughly, including the web interface and restore functions.
Backblaze takes the approach that backing up more is better. They back up everything on your computer except your operating system, applications, temporary files, or those over 9 GB. You don’t choose what to include in your backup, only directories or files that you want to exclude. Storage space is unlimited and you can back up multiple computers to the same account, although there is a charge for each one. File restoration can be done by online download (for free) or they will FedEx your files on DVD or USB hard drive, for an additional charge.
Backblaze is available for Windows or Mac and the client software is very lightweight (currently occupying 8196 K of memory on my machine). It also provides for bandwidth throttling, so that you can control how much of your Internet connection it will use. If it gets through the next 14 days without any significant issues, I’ll sign up for a year of service for my primary computer, for $50. It will feel good to have added that safety net to my data.
