RossMAN
Grand Nagus
- Feb 24, 2000
- 78,821
- 326
- 136
Gonna buy a portable usb WD passport to back up files now.
Now would be a great time as they're currently on sale.
Gonna buy a portable usb WD passport to back up files now.
My slow 2mb internet connection makes the cloud more or less useless for me.
Gonna buy a portable usb WD passport to back up files now.
... Apart from some things like irreplaceable photos and a handful of documents like my birth certificate (kept in a safe-deposit box anyway) I can't think of many things more valuable to me than those files.
The Cloud is proof that there is an abundance of stupid people in this world.
Kind of like the Megaupload users?Id like to share with you all THAT.....after more than ten years of computer hobbying....and many crashes and lost data, that the only way to store your data safely and securely.... is by using an online file storage facility.
The "cloud" does provide a good dumping ground for backups, but it always seems to come with restrictions or prohibitive costs. Anything that will allow NAS backups either offers not enough free space, expensive limited space or out of sight mass storage. Programs like Carbonite and Mozy used to be a good deal, but now have slow upload speeds, restrictions on size or OS. For example, if you have a home AD domain or run Windows Server, Mozy makes you go with a business plan. There is always Amazon S3, but then you have to find a quality third party app to manage files, use Amazon's limited interface or script everything out.
For now, I'm going with a NAS using RAID 6, externally connected HDs for daily backups and a remote NAS using RAID 10 for daily backups. The one time investment was heavy, but I should have years of local and remote mass storage.
Crashplan. I'm running it on all of my Windows 7 machines and Server 2008R2 (and yes, I'm running my own domain). I have a friend running hers on OSX, using my server as a destination. I also have a friend running it on his Synology NAS (you'll want a NAS with at least 512MB of RAM). Under the hood, the Crashplan software is just Java code.
No other cloud provider offers the software for free that lets you handle your own backups if you don't want to use their cloud storage. As long as it's for home use and not for a business, there's no restriction on the OS it's installed on. There's also no file size limit with Crashplan.
So do these cloud systems require you use proprietary software? What if you aren't running Windows, and what if you want to automate/script stuff? The only thing I could see myself using these services for is to supplement my existing backups and I'd want to be able to use rsync/SSH.
I don't know how the other cloud services work, but to me Dropbox is really more of a syncing solution than one of "storing" things in the cloud. I script weekly Dropbox backups. Don't know if this is necessary, as Dropbox claims to offer prior versions of files, but I've never tested that functionality. You can also easily script moving things into or out of your local Dropbox, and the changes get sync'd on all systems. You don't have to work with any remote files, as the changes are pushed out transparently by the software.
With Crashplan, yes, you are using their proprietary software. As I said before, it runs on any operating system. Windows, OSX, and Linux (there's no official BSD support, but you can hack around that if you really want). There really isn't much need to automate or script things with Crashplan, as it's meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it solution. You tell it what local files to backup, and what destinations to backup to. It handles the rest (you can set the backup frequency and how far in the past to keep deleted files) and will notify you by email if your systems haven't been able to reach their backup destinations for three days (the default - again, you can change this setting). If you're setting a system to be used as a backup destination, you specify where the backup archives are stored.
I've gone through the hassle of setting up my own rsync/ssh/mail cronjobs before, but to me this is a completely painless solution that is OS independent. You also get the benefit of encryption and deduplication for free.
There's no reason why you couldn't install Crashplan alongside your existing backup solution for the time being to evaluate it. Again, the software is free to use. The only thing you ever pay for is to backup to their datacenters.
Hi All,
Id like to share with you all THAT.....after more than ten years of computer hobbying....and many crashes and lost data, that the only way to store your data safely and securely.... is by using an online file storage facility.
It can be done for free.....just search for free online data storage.....
Now...when your computer crashes with all you data lost OR....your computer is stolen....OR....your house is victim to a Tornado, YOU will still have all your data safely stored in the CLOUD.
Hope this helps many,
Berne