Off site file storage - Who do you use?

Feek

Feek

Feek

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I figured it was time I had an off site copy of my important data so I've been playing around with Dropbox.

I've played around with the structure of my Documents folder so it's split into two, one folder which I want to keep an off site copy of and the other which I don't. I've dumped a symbolic link into my Dropbox and it's working fine, it's uploading now.

The problem is that it's a bit limited. I'm not sure I like the symbolic link method of doing this, I'd rather be able to set up more complicated lists of what I keep off site copies of and schedule when the bulk of copying will take place. Also the free Dropbox is just 5Gb which although enough for what I'm doing won't be enough if I decide to do more.

So, are you using an off site backup service? What are you using, what does it cost and can you get quite detailed about bandwidth, timings, folders etc?

Ta.
 
Personally I use Mozy on my MBP and my home MacMini server.

About 40Gb on my MBP, and now about 750Gb on my Macmin. It uploads at around 1Mbps even when I've tried doing it on a 10Mbps upload - it's limited at their end.

The Mozy client can have its idonsyncrices unfortunately. For example I find if I backup the Safari bootmarks directly it can cause beach-balling. Also, I have to sometimes refresh the file selection on my encrypted images.

So far though it's been pretty good - I've restored from it a couple of times and it works pretty well.

55US$/unit per year for unlimited. I think I'm going to drop to 1 unit and just have my MBP auto-upload stuff to the Mini. Would make more sense I guess.
 
I've got MobileMe but it doesn't really do what I want - It's less effective than the Dropbox really.

Does Mozy allow individual folder/file selections and can it be scheduled?
 
JungleDisk looks very good but it's also very expensive. I'd be looking at something like $50/month which is far too much.

CrashPlan looks interesting.
 
I'm using Carbonite. Costs me about £35 a year (It's $55 but whatever the exchange is at the time) for unlimited storage. Small program that runs in the background watching folders I've set it too, whenever free upload bandwidth is there off it goes. Places small dots in the corner of files, yellow if they're due to upload, green if they've been fully uploaded. At any point you can restore your files if the worst should happen, just log-on on any machine and download away.

Currently have 218GB in mine :) Heavily dependant on your upload connection of course.
 
I keep hearing about Carbonite, but doesn't it only give you storage space equivalent to the drive space on the Mac / ignore external drives.
 
hyper_piper45, thanks for the link - It was listening to that item on the MacFormat podcast which got me looking into this!

I've got the freebie version of Mozy running now and it all seems good but the scheduling isn't as detailed as I'd hope - I'd like to be able to throttle the bandwidth differently at weekends to weekdays and that doesn't appear to be an option.
 
EVH said:
I keep hearing about Carbonite, but doesn't it only give you storage space equivalent to the drive space on the Mac / ignore external drives.
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Unfortunately it does ignore external USB drives, though I have multiple internal hardrives so it's not so much an issue for me. I'm not sure if you can get it to work with a NAS connected via ESATA though.
 
Bah, I've now loaded CrashPlan, Carbonite and Mozy but none of them allow scheduling to the level I requre :(
 
I guess so - It's just that I have limited bandwidth from 08:00-00:00 weekdays and unlimited outside that time so I'd like to be able to custom throttle according to those days/times. Ho hum.
 
Would another option be to schedule when the client runs which effectively would allow the level of flexibility you require? Just another take on the problem :)
 
Feek said:
I guess so - It's just that I have limited bandwidth from 08:00-00:00 weekdays and unlimited outside that time so I'd like to be able to custom throttle according to those days/times. Ho hum.
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Schedule a script to copy the plists about maybe?
 
I emailed Dropbox about getting a 10GB plan and they send me on some links for customised plans i.e 10Gb, 20GB etc. The plans they have advertised are not much good!

If you don't need that much space then its worth a try.
 
Adrianr said:
Unfortunately it does ignore external USB drives, though I have multiple internal hardrives so it's not so much an issue for me. I'm not sure if you can get it to work with a NAS connected via ESATA though.
Click to expand...

Hmmm I was talking backing up a 16TB DroboPro via ISCSI :D

Don't think they'd like that!
 
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