People – you need to backup your Android Phones and iPhones. You’ve probably got backups on your computer but you know you should have more than one backup. With every new phone I get, the camera is better and I find I user my point and shoot less and less.
Mozy makes it dead simple to backup your mobile phone data so really you’ve got no excuse.
To get 20% off your Mozy subscription click the link below and use code mozyoct at signup!
Personal backups on Dreamhost without violoating their TOS. wiki article with details
Before Dreamhost began offering personal backup space countless users were (in violation of Dreamhost’s Terms of Service) simply helping themselves. It was simply too easy for a Dreamhost customers to abuse the generous hard drive space provided buy the discount shared-hosting service.
Rather than continue to fight a growing, unpopular war with its customers, Dreamhost has offered up a sanctioned alternative for personal backups. The caveat is that personal backups may only be accessed from a separate FTP account and they can’t be accessed by a webserver.
This is likely to curb the amount of piracy taking place on Dreamhost’s servers and reduce the number of DMCA requests their office receives. Dreamhost should be commended for making the best of the situation for both their users and the copyright holders involved involved.
I’m running a pair of 500GB LaCie drives in RAID 1 set that got out of sync recently during a hardware failure that resulted in Apple replacing my logic board. I first noticed this because Disk Utility listed my RAID set as ‘degraded’. Simple enough to fix, I thought, and clicked the Rebuild button. Wrong.
Turns out there is a bug in Leopard’s Disk Utility whereby you must use the command line to rebuild degraded RAID sets. If you are getting the infamous ‘Unrecognized Filesystem’ error when you try to rebuild your RAID set follow the instructions below.
RSync is an open source program that provides incremental file transfer for both local and remote files. RSync comes pre-installed on most unix and linux based systems (including Mac OS X) but distributions are available for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows (e.g. cwrsync).
This article will focus on how to setup a personal backup using one of the suddenly ubiquitous shared hosting companies like DreamHost, LunarPages or BlueHost. If you already have a account with one of these companies it won’t cost you anything to start backing up your data to a remote server. If you don’t already have an account and want to setup online backup you have two choices:
RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. The purpose of RAID is to increase one or some combination of the following: performance, reliability, and larger data volume sizes. RAID systems distribute data across two or more disks to gain these advantages.
Why do you care? You should care if you are a computer user with large data storage requirements who uses a single hard drive for archiving your files. Obviously if your drive fails you are going to be in a world of hurt. With a RAID system, you set it up once and then don’t think about it again until a drive fails, at which point you won’t lose any data, you just replace the failed drive and move along.
RAID is an umbrella term for a few distinct systems which are identified by number. We will only discuss the RAID configurations that a typical computer user might use to achieve data redundancy and therefore fault tolerance.
Carbonite was launched a little over a year ago as a photo backup service. Since then they have grown considerably, and launching international versions and expanding their services to include full-fledged backup.
Their pricing model @ $49.95 / year for unlimited backup is less expensive that most of their competitors. Carbonite’s software only runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista, so Mac users will need to look to another serivce, like Mozy. For Windows users, Carbonite offers a level of integration that its competitors can’t match. Their software allows you to see right from Windows Explorer (i.e. Desktop, My Documents, etc.) each file or folder’s backup status.
Carbonite’s security model is very similar to the other major players in the market, that is to say, very good. All files are encrypted twice; you may optionally manage your own private key to prevent even Carbonite employees from decrypting your data.
All-in-all Carbonite’s backup service is a very appealing one to Windows users who need simple online backup. The simplicity of their service combined with the depth of its integration into the Windows operating system and low price create a perfect storm for a great number of users. Odds are, one of those users is you.
Click the banner below to get started started with Carbonite.
I first heard about Mozy back in 2005 when it was in Beta but I didn’t try it until recently when I found out that they offered a Mac OS X version of their software. Apple users finally have access to the great backup service our Windows friends have been using for years. Signing up for the free 2GB Mozy account and installing the software couldn’t be simpler.
Installation on my Macbook Pro only took a few minutes. When it started up, it showed me a list of things I might like to backup. I simply checked the items I wished to backup, clicked start, and Mozy started backing me up.
Transfer rates were respectable, if not spectacular. The transfer rates would probably be higher if Mozy didn’t encrypt everything. Twice.
That’s right, your files are encrypted once locally with 448-bit Blowfish encryption and then again with 128 bit SSL when they are transferred. Mozy clearly wants you to feel that your data is safe. You have the option of using a Mozy encryption key, or a personal encryption key. If you go with a personal key, be sure to keep it somewhere safe because if you lose it you’re out of luck. Most people use the Mozy key, which in the event of an emergency means Mozy can help you decrypt your data.
If you outgrow your 2GB free account (easy to do for music or photo buffs) you can upgrade to an unlimited account for $4.95 / month. A steal when you consider the alternatives:
1. Praying that your hard drive won’t crash and you won’t get a virus (doesn’t work)
2. Backing up to hard drives or DVD-R and keeping them off-site. Safe from fires and burglars (works but a hassle)
I’ll be counting on my Mozy account to save my butt if (when) something bad happens to my computer.
Click the banner below to sign up for a free Mozy account.
BeInSync is an online backup product that, in addition to backing up your data, allows you to automatically keep folders on multiple computers in sync and share files with others. This is can be a real boon to people who do work on multiple computers, an office computer and a home computer for example.
The service is based on their Microsoft Windows software application which I tested this week. I should note that I am a Macintosh user and BeInSync doesn’t have a Macintosh compatible version of their software so I tested it in a virtualized Windows environment using Parallels. That said, setup was a snap. I signed up for their free trial and downloaded the BeInSync application which is only 9.5MB. I was up and running in under 5 minutes.
Although the terms in question here are pretty descriptive, we will start with a few definitions. When we talk about a complete backup, we mean that the backup contains a copy of every file on the computer, and usually is bootable. Bootable means that the backup contains a complete working operating system that you could run on your computer. Everything else is a partial backup.
Complete backups seem, on the face, inarguably better. So why would anyone choose to go with partial backups? The main reason is that it’s somtimes just not necessary. Your operating system and other programs take up a lot of space, rarely change, and can easily be restored from installation CDs. Operating systems are also very fragile things. In many cases if you experience major hardware failure you will need to reload your operating system anyway. If you are keeping multiple versions of your backup (and you should be), complete backups can quickly become a hefty amount of data to store.
Even though complete backups aren’t always necessary, they are very powerful tools. If you do have catastrophic data loss, a complete backup can get your machine up and running in its previous working state in a matter of hours. If you have a lot of software that requires installation and configuration you could spend days getting it all set up again. Users for whom downtime is very expensive are the best candidates for a complete backup plan.
The best of both worlds
It’s very possible (and quite prudent!) to implement a hybrid strategy. A bi-monthly or weekly complete backup combined with a daily partial backup will keep you covered in most cases while keeping total backup size at a manageable level.
