Cloud Backup Options

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nzkiwiman

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#173876 9-Jun-2015 12:54

Been tempted to sign up for some cloud backup options, now that I have requested a fibre connection (which would actually allow me to upload things)
I am doing local backups to another hard drive, but wanted an off-site backup "just in case"

I do have 15GB both with One Drive and Google Drive but only use One Drive for accessing a few documents from time to time.

Does anyone recommend any companies?
Does anyone recommend actually doing online backups?

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#1320251 9-Jun-2015 12:55

Crashplan is commonly recommended by GZ users.

Note many online storage providers limit bandwidth to prevent some users adversely affecting others.

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Talkiet

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#1320252 9-Jun-2015 12:56

about 2.5TB on Backblaze. Client is lightweight, reliable and the service for me has been perfect. Their options for restore are good and they are a self funded bootstrapped company, not burning VC investment.

Downsides? They are basically a "backup everything" option for your PC - you can exclude folders etc, but you can't just set it to do only your data.

I don't care. I've used them for at least 3 years and I'll continue paying them.

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Inphinity

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#1320253 9-Jun-2015 12:58

Crashplan and Backblaze are probably the best options I've come across.

SumnerBoy

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#1320254 9-Jun-2015 13:00

Crashplan is great. I have a single subscription which runs on my Ubuntu home server. Then I have my various PCs and laptops running the free version of their client software, backing up to the home server. So in effect all PCs are being backed up to the cloud. It is very easy to plug in an extra USB HDD to my home server and configure Crashplan to back up there as well.

Thoroughly recommend for ease of use, cross platform support, and price. Plus they have a data center in Sydney so a bit closer to home.

timmmay

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#1320256 9-Jun-2015 13:01

I researched this yesterday. Crashplan is most widely recommended, followed by BackBlaze. I use Crashplan, it works well for the small data volumes I have. I know BB have done some work on multithreaded uploads, which could be a big advantage for NZ users with higher latency. Crashplan has an Australia data center so latency less of an issue.

khull

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#1320268 9-Jun-2015 13:16

Any views on carbonite?

timmmay

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#1320281 9-Jun-2015 13:20

khull: Any views on carbonite?

Don't get trapped inside it.

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Inphinity

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#1320286 9-Jun-2015 13:23

khull: Any views on carbonite?

Haven't used it personally, the name puts me off. Don't like something that has a reasonable chance of killing what you put in it, and then leaves it kinda screwed over for a bit once you do take it out ;)

freitasm

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#1320289 9-Jun-2015 13:28

Crashplan is so much more flexible than Carbonite. And cheaper.

davidcole

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#1320324 9-Jun-2015 14:25

SumnerBoy: Crashplan is great. I have a single subscription which runs on my Ubuntu home server. Then I have my various PCs and laptops running the free version of their client software, backing up to the home server. So in effect all PCs are being backed up to the cloud. It is very easy to plug in an extra USB HDD to my home server and configure Crashplan to back up there as well.

Thoroughly recommend for ease of use, cross platform support, and price. Plus they have a data center in Sydney so a bit closer to home.

How are you doing this? if one machine is backing up to cloud, are then then backing up the crashplan backup files?

I tend to back the shiz out of all my machines, but also have copy jobs set up to copy to the files to my server so that crashplan can back each file up individually.

WHich BTW is another recommendation for crashplan. I have tried mozy and carbonite in the past. Crashplan being the most flexible, I currently have it running on one server for internal backups + cloud. And on another 4 windows machines just for protection to the server (important stuff I also copy to the server also so they're backed up to the cloud), and a linux machine. They have clients for all (and I think mac).

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mattwnz

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#1320353 9-Jun-2015 15:02

khull: Any views on carbonite?

When I last looked at it, it only allowed you to backup the computers primary drive or a single one, and not other ones. May have changed now though.

sidefx

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#1320355 9-Jun-2015 15:09

Another +1 for crashplan. I mainly stick with it because it has a linux client, so everything important ends up on my amahi home server then backs up to crashplan from there.

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SumnerBoy

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#1320360 9-Jun-2015 15:14

davidcole: How are you doing this? if one machine is backing up to cloud, are then then backing up the crashplan backup files?

Yep - the PCs just backup to a 'folder' on my home server, and Crashplan running on the home server backs up these folders to the cloud.

So no individual files being backed up to the cloud for each PC, but good enough by my reckoning.

I have two USB HDDs mounted to the home server as well, one as a duplicate for the cloud backups (i.e. local copy for easy restoring if required) and one for all my media which is too large a collection to backup to the cloud.

Everything is very easy to setup with Crashplan. Sounds like you have something very similar.

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#1320371 9-Jun-2015 15:30

I like CrashPlan, but it has one major limitation... a Java-based client that requires in the region of 1GB of RAM per terabyte being backed up. Having somewhere in the region of 10TB of data to backup, it required well beyond the resources I was prepared to allocate to it - a virtual machine with perhaps 2GB RAM at the absolute most (ideally under 512MB).

I am currently using Cyphertite for my online backups, but it has bugs, support is lacking, and I wouldn't be surprised if it disappeared over night. Still, it's the best command line based solution I've found, with something approximating reliable back-end storage. Relying on FUSE on top of HTTP/WebDAV or proprietary protocols, with unknown reliability of writing data to disk at the back end, seems like a very fragile approach to backing up data, so while Amazon Cloud Drive, Hubic and similar have potential, they just don't inspire confidence. Sticking to backup-oriented solutions seems like the best approach.

+1 for CrashPlan if you don't mind it being a memory hog.

davidcole

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#1320375 9-Jun-2015 15:36

SumnerBoy:
davidcole: How are you doing this? if one machine is backing up to cloud, are then then backing up the crashplan backup files?

Yep - the PCs just backup to a 'folder' on my home server, and Crashplan running on the home server backs up these folders to the cloud.

So no individual files being backed up to the cloud for each PC, but good enough by my reckoning.

I have two USB HDDs mounted to the home server as well, one as a duplicate for the cloud backups (i.e. local copy for easy restoring if required) and one for all my media which is too large a collection to backup to the cloud.

Everything is very easy to setup with Crashplan. Sounds like you have something very similar.

Yeah Server with DriveBender is a crashplan repository for internal machines and for 1 external friend.
Server has a number of backup sets, 1 to cloud and folder (and used to be to another machine at home.
The rest of the server sets backup to a folder.
All of the crashplan folders on teh file system are duplicated in drivebender to more than one drive.
And a fair chunk of it is copied to a spare 1.5tb drive I have just to keep it on one platter.

Client machines have crashplan backups to server (helps if you hose a file), and for special stuff, I copy the individual files to teh server to a directory that's part of the cloud backup.

All very complicated, but generally means I should have 2 - 4 copies of most files.

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