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Computers and Software => Computers and Software - General => Topic started by: squeegee on July 12, 2011, 06:43:48 PM
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Can anyone comment on a service they like and why?
I'm looking for a good service to backup about 5-6 computers and a network drive.
TIA for any opinions.
Squeeg
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I can't comment on any specific cloud service but the killer for me is how can I backup up a computer that ALREADY has 10+ gigs of files? Would take forever and timeout before it ever completes the backup, no?
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A buddy of mine is on the cutting edge of this. Before he started his own business, he was IT guy for a large advertising firm and he set that company up on cloud-based servers. The whole company, that is, except the creative department. Multi-layer Photoshop files and huge video files are simply too much for the cloud. Right now, it's great for backing up business documents, not so much for big art files.
Even for the business files, they had to send a disk to the cloud server company for the initial backup, then subsequent backups are done online.
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We have biz docs, data stuff, etc. in the cloudiness but all the art files are on the workstations hard drive, backed up by a time machine drive.
I'll be jumping on this as soon as it's a feasibility. I think our problem here in the U.S. might be how dismally slow and ancient our internet service is. There's a PBS documentary on this that's interesting. Apparently our tax dollars paid for the upgrade but we were never delivered the goods.
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I've got a bit of cloud with 1.5GB in it, no big artwork files - just not practical - but it works OK, it's just a disaster insurance programme. It backs up on the fly and just resumes the session when back on line so there is no real limit to the sizes.
Bear in mind that your download speed is often 10x your upload speed, I have a 10GB service, but the upload speed is only 1GB.
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I have everything backed up online, we have to.
Doesn't surprise me that something went wrong with our tax dollars. The government is bloated to follow up and won't care if they get what they paid for, it's not their money.
And frankly, better internet won't create jobs here. It will just make it faster and easier to send everything to China. ;D
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Apparently our tax dollars paid for the upgrade but we were never delivered the goods.
Surprised?
I've been using Carbonite for a few years now. It has saved my a** more than once. Works fine for pc backup but the last I checked, it wont read a network drive.
The initial backup takes days. It's a combination of your internet upload speed plus throttling on Carbonite's part to ensure their network doesnt bog down. Once the initial backup is done, it auto synchs files everytime something is changed. I have mine set to only run when the CPU is idle and I'm not working on something.
On site, I have a network server running two 2 terra drives in a RAID configuration. It provides a good onsite solution for backing up but since it's a network drive, i'm still looking around for an offsite automatic solution to back up the server. I take images of the drives once a week on DVD's and take them home but an automatic solution would be better.
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I am still working on perfecting our backup system here, but carbonite is a life saver, and at $5 a month, it's more than worth it.
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I did find this comparison chart, but haven't had time to really go through it. My main hangup with Carbonite was as mentioned, no support for network drives.
I know bandwidth is an issue, but it seems once the intial backup is done, that bandwidth wouldn't be a problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services)
Backing up to external harddrives is time consuming and because of that I don't do it enough.
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squeegee,
i just got off the phone with these people.
http://www.ibackup.com/ (http://www.ibackup.com/)
multiple pcs and NAS drive support. might be the solution. worth checking out i think
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and that is the case, once the initial backup is done, it runs in the background and it very efficient.
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squeegee,
i just got off the phone with these people.
[url]http://www.ibackup.com/[/url] ([url]http://www.ibackup.com/[/url])
multiple pcs and NAS drive support. might be the solution. worth checking out i think
Thanks dude, I will check into it :)
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I am still working on perfecting our backup system here, but carbonite is a life saver, and at $5 a month, it's more than worth it.
I use Carbonite also, but I just got an email from them regarding the new Mac Lion OS. As of yet, Carbonite isn't compatible, although they are working on it. Just a heads up for any Mac users thinking of the upgrade.
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Not a fan of cloud based back up. Too slow often, and too small the rest of the time.
I prefer to keep an in house server to back up our data. We have over 10tb of data here, which is a lot for just 2 people. But we do a ton of design work so our customers files are very important to them and us. They know if they lose it, we wont!
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I've got an older firewire case with a smaller drive in it I'm thinking of re-purposing with a 500GB drive and using Apple's Time Machine utility to back up. It isn't off-site, but it'll back up everything on my MacBook, and the main reason I use Carbonite is to save my work files. I could get this Mac or a new one up and running in a day or less. Lose the work files, and I'm screwed.
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Not a fan of cloud based back up. Too slow often, and too small the rest of the time.
I prefer to keep an in house server to back up our data. We have over 10tb of data here, which is a lot for just 2 people. But we do a ton of design work so our customers files are very important to them and us. They know if they lose it, we wont!
Brandt, I agree with keeping it in-house for faster access but what happens if the building burns down or you lose the server due to hardware or theft? 20 years in IT, I've seen it happen to many times so I do hope you have some type of off site backup. Like you said, your customers are dependent on you to have their files.
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Not a fan of cloud based back up. Too slow often, and too small the rest of the time.
I prefer to keep an in house server to back up our data. We have over 10tb of data here, which is a lot for just 2 people. But we do a ton of design work so our customers files are very important to them and us. They know if they lose it, we wont!
Brandt, I agree with keeping it in-house for faster access but what happens if the building burns down or you lose the server due to hardware or theft? 20 years in IT, I've seen it happen to many times so I do hope you have some type of off site backup. Like you said, your customers are dependent on you to have their files.
Absolutely we do. We bring in a 2TB drive for important data once a month and back it up and take it home.
Everything here is redundant as hell.
My computers all have separate data drives, so if the harder worked OS drive dies or needs re installed no data is effected. Additionally each computer has a external that copies exactly the internal data drives. Then the server each night copies each whole computer.
Pretty safe id say. Overkill probably. But that's smarter in my book. I could loose the sever and the main computer. Still got the external and a at worst month old copy at home. Or combinations of that.
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We use backblaze.com for our backups. It's $5 a month for unlimited storage. It backs up in real time over the internet. The cool thing was i had a piece of art, it was only on my computer for about 30 minutes. I thought i was done with it so i trashed it. Then realizing i needed it i was able to pop on their website and sure nuff.. It was there for me to redownload.
Can't say enough good stuff about backblaze.
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We use backblaze.com for our backups. It's $5 a month for unlimited storage. It backs up in real time over the internet. The cool thing was i had a piece of art, it was only on my computer for about 30 minutes. I thought i was done with it so i trashed it. Then realizing i needed it i was able to pop on their website and sure nuff.. It was there for me to redownload.
Can't say enough good stuff about backblaze.
Its great for smaller files, our issue with online backups is size of files and our internet connection is not the best in East TN. (10 down/ .896 up) Which is horrible. I came from Philly area before this, I had 70 down, and 30 up. LOL
We have several Terra bytes worth of data, sending it up to the cloud, would take forever on our connection. I am also not into trusting people with my files.
Works great for some though.
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We have a T1 here, so speed isn't an issue.
I ran into that the other day, somehow a file disappeared after a restart. I probably saved it in the wrong place and deleted it, but anyway, there is was, on carbonite. All I did was download it and it saved me a couple hours of work.
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Something that I haven't seen mentioned yet is good old Microsoft SkyDrive... It's a freebie 25GB service for doc, image and other file storage that can be linked to a free hotmail/live account. Not the most efficient system on the planet, but for backing up those, "Once every few months" files it's a great option.
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Just found this company this morning, Myotherdrive.com. I have to check them out completely but they have up to 10TB plans available. Price is reasonable $110/yr 500GB, $240/yr 1 TB, multiple machines, NAS, external, thumb, ROM drives supported under one account. Claimed support for Mac.
http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/actions/viewRegister (http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/actions/viewRegister)
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How are those prices reasonable?.....Carbonite is less that 60.00 a year for unlimited....And what size is enough?....I have 123,533 files and 123 GB of data backed up..
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$60 on carbonite only gets you one machine, no NAS support is offered at all. I have multiple machines I want to back up, plus a NAS. Carbonite seems good for single users but is not network friendly so far.
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$60 on carbonite only gets you one machine, no NAS support is offered at all. I have multiple machines I want to back up, plus a NAS. Carbonite seems good for single users but is not network friendly so far.
It seems I spoke too soon.....Sorry about that!...