Remote backup

Turbo-G

Turbo-G

Turbo-G

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Joined
6 Jan 2009
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1,191
Do many of you with more conventional backup routines also back up over the internet?

I currently back up to an external hard disk via Time Machine, which sits above my Mac on a shelf - great if I need to make a quick restore of a particular file for example. Not so great if there was a fire or burglary, as I'm likely to lose both my iMac and external hard disk!

So it seems the logical solution would be to back up to some remote storage over the net in addition to my normal time machine backup...

I've been looking around, and CrashPlan seems decent at a good price. Does anybody have experience of CrashPlan or others on their Mac's?

I think I would opt for the "CrashPlan+ Unlimited" package which would work out as $49.99 for the year - http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl

Cheers.

G
 
I need to sort this, I think CrashPlan was the one I originally decided upon *goes to read further and perhaps sign up*
 
Bit of a shameless plug but I've recently started using Spideroak after seeing it on an episode of Hak5

It's not limited to 1 pc and allows you to share the same files between pc's (bit like a network drive), it also stores multiple copies of the same files, for example if you edit a docement or photo and decide you want to go back to an earlier version.

Works for Mac, Linux & Windows, as well as having clients for Iphone & Android :)

** do not post referral links **
 
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I have been thinking about this recently too. Have been a bit unsure about over the internet backups as I only have an 8 meg connection and upload isnt that fast.

Would an alternative solutionbe to get another external hard drive and then setup something like carbon copy cloner and backup your full machine to that and then keep this drive offsite, at say a parents house, at work or somewhere else that isnt your house?

Just a thought.
 
Yeah my broadband connection is a 20mb line but I only get 3.5mb dl and a pretty poor upload due to the line infrastructure, so I imagine the initial full backup would take a couple of days and then incrementals won't be too noticeable.

Mac Format did a comparison review in issue 230 and crashPlan came out top overall.
 
I use rsync scripts for automated remote backup.

I guess it depends on what you're backing up but you are putting a lot of trust in the host/company/service you're uploading to if u use any automated services.
Also some really dubious 'agreements' on a lot of them.
 
I use Crashplan+ and I've been impressed with it so far.

Software is good and stable, and runs nicely in the background taking care of day to day backups. there is a beta tray indicator which is good which shows you whats waiting to backup etc. I used it about 3 months ago to upload my entire MBP home folder and it seemed to be maxing out at about 200 kbps which wasn't great. However, I recently added another computer on and it was backing up at 1.6 mbps, so it backed up 250gb in no time at all, so it would seem upload performance can be variable.

Restoring I've always found very quick when I've need to grab a file, but never tried a full restore in anger yet.

The only irritating thing to me is that it doesn't seem to deal well with things like iphoto libraries as it shows all the files within it rather than just one big file, so you need to be relatively careful with it.
 
I use Crashplan too, moved from Mozy after they knackered the pricing.

Ref the iPhoto libraries - that's all an iPhoto library is, a collection of files. If you restore the whole directory it will still appear as an iPhoto library in Finder.

If you right-click on your library, show package contents then you'll get the same view?
 
MacRS4 said:
I use Crashplan too, moved from Mozy after they knackered the pricing.

Ref the iPhoto libraries - that's all an iPhoto library is, a collection of files. If you restore the whole directory it will still appear as an iPhoto library in Finder.

If you right-click on your library, show package contents then you'll get the same view?
Click to expand...

Of course, just for the average non-technical mac user like my brother, its a touch confusing when i showed him crashplan....
 
Yeah I would literally only recover from it if my iMac and external hard drive got damaged/stolen. My time machine backups are fine for day to day recoveries if ever needed.

The only thing that is slightly concerning is the fact you're uploading all of your personal data onto a server somewhere which in theory could fall over or it's security could become breached. But you would hope security and resilience were catered for strongly with one of these more popular solutions, and I doubt Mac Format would reccommend them if their policies were dubious.
 
I spent some time today trying to make this work, no matter what I did, I couldn't persuade it to even start running the backup *sigh*

Uninstalled.
 
I've half a mind to resolve this sort of problem by just picking up another terabyte drive which I'll leave at my parents house or work or something, and I'll just do a monthly backup to that.
 
I use Arq to backup to amazon s3 servers which costs approx $5 per month for around 50GB. But you only pay for what you use & bandwidth transfer in/out.

I have seen a few of these crashplan type sites fail and thats enough to put me off using them thats why I prefer to effectively roll my own and use Arq+Amazon who are far less likely to go under or stop offering cheap bandwidth.
 
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