Data Back-up and The Cloud
May 7th, 2010 by Intermanaut
I’ve long been a fan of on-line back-up services as a better-than-separate-hard-drive option, but this week I’ve started to have a niggling doubt about how useful they can be in a catastrophic event, such as house fire or burglary.
If you back-up your precious photos and data to another (USB or FireWire) drive you still need to secure the hard-drive somewhere. I use a couple of portable, self-power drives, but I keep them in a draw next to my PC. To a degree that’s pointless - if the house is burgled the chances are that Joe Criminal will take the lot. Ditto in a fire. The backup drive should be stored somewhere else, but that’s a faff to do and you have to be quite disciplined in rotating at least two off-site back-up drives.
I started using Mozy about a year ago. I initially used the free service, just backing-up email and documents. After a few months I realised that Mozy was taking the effort out of securing data, so I signed up for their unlimited option and upgraded my broadband to match. So far I’ve uploaded about 100GB of data to their cloud-based service, and have another 250GB to go. On Monday I anticipate that my back-up requirement will have grown by another 10GB. I’m currently only storing photos (negatives and post-process PSD files), but if I decided that I wanted to secure my MP3 collection I’d be storing 600GB online.
It occurred to me this week, though, that, as these services only maintain files while they’re on your PC or for thirty days after they’re deleted locally, I might not be able to recover all of my data if I lost all local back-ups. Why not?
I have a DSL broadband service provided by BT. They’re not particularly brilliant and DSL is gigabytes behind cable in terms of download/upload speeds, but I do have unlimited download as long as I stay within their Fair Use Policy. However, they don’t define what “fair use” is in terms of download capacity. Using the other BT packages as a guide (10GB and 20GB per month) I guess I’m allowed between 40GB and 100GB before my bandwidth gets throttled to 1Mb/s. I’m already at that limit with my current cloud storage, so what can I do to recover data when I’ve got 450GB up there? Apart from downloading datasets to different machines using different network connections, I have no idea, but all ISPs enforce FUPs on all customers regardless of the package you’re on.
The only viable option is a combination of local, external hard-drive storage (for everything) and a cloud-based service, such as Mozy or LiveDrive, for critical data, photos of your kids growing up, and so on.
Update - just got this by email from a Mozy user
Mozy: Welcome to Mozy Live Support. How may I help you?
User: I have been looking through the FAQ and can not seem to find my answer. How long will my backup be stored on the mozy server for if my computer does not connect?
Mozy: Till the account is active.
User: Thats great as I had heard that there is a 30 day limit which scared me as: I may be away for that period with the machine off or in teh case of a full disaster it may take longer than this to download the whole lot. So you can confirm that in both these situations I would be OK as long as my account was active?
Mozy: In case if the computer is dead, than if you do not run, the files will be on the server, till the account is active.
Mozy: But if you run the Mozy on the new computer without restoring the files, than since the files are not present on the new computer, Mozy will mark the files for deletion.
Mozy: They will be on the server for 30 days.
User: so are you saying they will be on the server for 30 days after being marked for deletion?
Mozy: Yes.
User: great I think I get it:
User: so
Mozy: Excellent!
User: if I leave the computer off for 40 days this does not matter the files will never get marked for deletion whilst my account is active?
Mozy: Yes.
User: can you confirm this please?
Mozy: That’s correct.
User: Fab
User: then if i get a new computer don’t run mosy client until I have restored all my data?
Mozy: Yes, the files will be on the server till the account is active.
User: brilliant thanks for the clarification
Mozy: You are welcome.
So, in the event of a catastrophic drive failure, don’t re-install the client until you’ve downloaded your data.
Hang on. Your PC explodes in a shower of exploding stuff, so the Mozy/whatever client stops connecting and updating. Does your data still disappear in 30 days? It’s not marked as deleted so for all Mozy/whatever knows it’s still on your PC.
Bandwidth throttling by the ISP is a big problem when you have big backup sets, like you do. In the US, as competition enters a market, caps are traditionally lifted & speeds increased (something they could have done long ago, but they only react when the threat of losing a customer appears).
All “unlimited” online backup solutions I’ve seen (Mozy, Backblaze, Carbonite) will delete your data after 30 days. These companies provide online backup, not online storage.
If you want to use the cloud for online storage, you’ll have to look at a package which limits the GB allowed to be saved, like SugarSync.