Since losing a load of files when a hard drive broke on me I've been sporadically looking at the alternatives for backing up and the way forward these days would seem to be to go online rather than trust in an additional drive. I've got some stuff on google drive and have some space available via BT broadband but I'm not entirely sure how secure these places are or if it is worth paying out for a dedicated service. There seems to be a vast array of choices out there with significant differences in price tag but for someone who is not particularly computer literate it all starts to blend into one fairly quickly so I'd appreciate any advice or experience people have. I'm not too sure how much space I really need, most of my pictures I can backup onto DVDs and store there rather than clog things up with TBs worth of them.

Thanks in advance.

The more back ups the better - My choice is a USB hard drive (which I store away from my house) AND online storage for the really precious stuff.

I have a 2TB external hard drive and use quite a few DVDs for my back ups. Hard drives will always evolve and break but a DVD drive will always be there.

Optical drives are headed the way of the Dodo IMO

Agreed. Optical drives on computers are becoming rarer unless you opt for an external one.

Look at both sizes of floppy disk drive!

It's also likely that file formats will change eventually and your data will be no longer readable as the software doesn't support it.

I realise that optical drive is going to vanish at some point. What I was hoping for was some insight into the different cloud providers as i cannot for now find an independent comparison of them.

I have a 2TB external hard drive and use quite a few DVDs for my back ups. Hard drives will always evolve and break but a DVD drive will always be there.

 

Stick with the USB external for backups, if it breaks then buy another. The end of the optical drive is in sight now with more and more computers coming without them. The idea of a backup is that it is a duplicate copy, not the only copy. So when (Not it, they all fail eventually) the HDD dies, then just create another duplicate.

 

Then there is the problem with recordable media, it degrades rapidly over time. Despite what was said when CDR's, DVD's etc. came out regarding a long life span, many discs become unreadable after just 1 or 2 years. I have several discs myself that can no longer be read, the chemicals break down so the laser can no longer read the data. If you are going to use DVD-R's, then make sure you regularly copy the DVD-R to another fresh one every year or so.

 

Me, well I gave up with CD's and DVD's and now have 4 USB HDDs with my data backup. I keep one copy here at home, just in case I need something in a hurry. The other copy is kept in my desk drawer at work, and is updated weekly.

 

Security of cloud based systems is the big problem, ask yourself how secure is your data really. If you can login or access the data, so can anyone else potentially. Also what happens if the chosen company go bust, pull out of cloud storage or even have a major outage or data breach. Your cloud storage could be offline for weeks, months etc.

+1 on recordable optical media. They don't last, and have been in a very hot room are likely gone.

Cheap USB drive and secure it. Ideal if you have a fireproof safe as we do for important stuff. Was about £70 from Staples

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Bear that in mind when using free cloud storage.

 

Cloud is fine as another backup, but best to have a local backup too. Cloud provders can and have gone tits up taking all their customers data with them. Those were paying customers too. Liquidator demanded £40k a head to recover the info.

 

Also bear in mind your privacy. If you are not encrypting your files before they go to the cloud then the cloud provider can (and Dropbox does) examine the contents of your folders and potentially help themselves to what they like.

 

So for a backup of essentially unimportant stuff, great.

 

For a backup of very personal, financial or any sort of valuable data, encrypt first then upload (Truecrypt containers).

 

If you're using optical you can pay extra for archival quality disks where the dyes are guarenteed for longer. but that guarentee only applies of you're storing to archival standards on temp and humidity.

Edited 6 October, 201312 yr by Aspman

I use cloud storage and its fine. For VERY important documents, i have an Iron Key: http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/

I nether agree with cloud nor disagree with cloud. It has its benefits and also its drawbacks. I agree with aspman and mannyo.....

Cloud is only secure but the files are freely sat on a server somewhere which can be happily accessed by an admin, regardless what the T&C's say. Encryption is great until you loose your key and then you will be stuffed.

I however don't agree though with the time frame of CD's / DVD's becoming degraded after 2 years. I still have a collection of backup copies from 2006. All but 1 are still readable....They were also cheap disks, stored in a normal cd case and in a normally temperature fluctuating house. Also my DVD films should have stopped years ago but happily are still playing to this day.....

The usb storage route is a major thumbs up. I would invest in a min of 2. One to store at home and another to store with family. The risk of storing it in a workplace is fire, theft and whether or not the business collapses leaving no access to the office. I currently have a setup where a nas box is the main store. My pics are stored on 2 drives and 2 laptops. It's not perfect at the moment due to hardware loss.....(disk crash). I am just looking at a new way of storing important data on 2 SSD's. Both will have pics and videos only... Locked with bitlocker and then key stored on an encrpyted penstick, just like the one cs.rogers posted about. Very expensive but well worth the price. All information about passwords should be stored on these encrypted pensticks and hidden.....2 is also better than one. I know this is classed as over kill but trust me, with the world and the way we store data, we have basically opened to many loop holes and not enough people understand the risks and we become to dependent on digital media....

Follow the basic principal of 3 2 1.

 

3 copies of anything you care for.

2 Locally

1 Offsite

 

I have a snapshot of my local machine, copying 'as is' in snapshots to a local storage. Files I care for are ina dropbox folder, this is covered by the snap shotter, on mac or on linux. 

 

So I have 3 copies of data, one on machine, one snapshot locally(as in nas / network / usb drive) and one in cloud within a few minutes.

 

Backups are, a chore and humans are not good at chores. So automate it, the more you have to plugin, the more likely it is to slip from every day, to week, to month to oops.

 

The various snapshot programs are ideal as they occur almost invisibly given current hardware/networking capabilities.

 

Although all that said, your last backup is the one you last restored from as i found out one day and will again I'm sure. When my nas crashed I was lost... failed to boot, when it did disks reported empty... went right past annoyed to ... well just ok cup of tea then? SWMBO simply said have you turned it off and on again... yay. 

SWMBO normally says its my fault......thats when she deletes something...

Well my IT took a giant coordinated dump at the weekend!

 

The NAS stopped working, couldn't access it or the data. Before doing a hard reset, I dug out my backups to check them (3 Western Digital external HDDs). Being a numpty I find the first 2 are about 6 months out of date. The 3rd drive wouldn't even initiate, no lights, no sound. I try various things and end up cracking the box open and switching the HDD to a USB dock I have.....smoke, panic, unplug and turn off. So that's toast, along with part of my backup.

 

The Wife then calls out that the laptop she's using won't turn on, random flashing status lights, no boot up and I can't do anything with it. Dropped it off at the local IT guy who investigates and it comes back that it's dead. Oh good grief.

 

Wallowing in despair, I pressed on with the hard reset of the NAS, but to my surprise I recovered the box and the data unharmed. I'm not feeling confident about the reliability of this NAS, the interface is a liability (Netgear Stora).

 

Weirdly enough, I gave an external HDD to my parents only last week with backup of all our photos of the kids, our wedding, holidays etc. This would have been a whole lot more frantic if that wasn't safe.

 

Thinking about my strategy for on-site, I’m wondering if a second NAS or a cheap sever setup is the way to go to get regular automated syncing between primary and backup. Can anyone comment on that?

 

For offsite I’m not sure that Cloud Storage is feasible at the moment, even with my reservations about company bankruptcy and security, I have about 1.5 Tb of files and woeful upload speeds. Sometimes I hate IT….

Follow the basic principal of 3 2 1.

 

3 copies of anything you care for.

2 Locally

1 Offsite

 

Wot he said essentially.

 

Usually you'd step back the frequency too. So your local copies would be daily or even hourly depending on your pattern of usage.

 

What would that mean in practice. Well a couple of USB drives with backup software or a local NAS if that's your geek thang.Then something as simple as another USN drive you keep at your parents or with a mate. Update the thing once a month and take it back. You can always encrypt it if you don't trust your mate.

 

Backups are always a PITA but you're always glad you did it..

I use www.carbonite.com

Not cheap, but you get unlimited storage for a flat fee.

I use www.carbonite.com

Not cheap, but you get unlimited storage for a flat fee.

Carbonite's good for freezing rebel scum :yes:

Yep, backup software would be a sensible move. Despite best intentions, I don't manually backup as often as I should.

 

Cloud might eventually be the way to go for convenient offsite storage, but not all the while I'm stuck on standard broadband. C'mon Openreach, sort it out!

I have been using CrashPlan for several years now.

 

Unlimited off-site storage.

 

Small client that runs and checks for new/updated files and then uploads to the CrashPlan servers. You can specifiy the frequency of the checking.

 

I have lots of Canon raw files, jpgs, videos + other stuff backed up. The initial backup can take quite some time though.

 

They have an Android app too so you can backup your phone.

 

The client can be used without the online storage bit so if you have a family member/friend you can backup to each others drive. Can even be used to backup to a local usb drive if you want - takes the effort out of doing it yourself.

 

As for cost - I got a good deal at $140 for 5 years unlimited storage. Works out at about £20/year.

 

I never have to worry about doing the backups - it just happens!

 

Mark

 

p.s. I have no financial interest in Crashplan - just a happy customer.

Might be a stupid question but, 'Cloud storage' as an alternative to your own HDD. Wherever your information is being stored not being some mystical thin air media, can't really be immune to mechanical failure? My assumption is that it would merely be in some other HDD (or whatever equivalent for mass data storage) somewhere else?  

Might be a stupid question but, 'Cloud storage' as an alternative to your own HDD. Wherever your information is being stored not being some mystical thin air media, can't really be immune to mechanical failure? My assumption is that it would merely be in some other HDD (or whatever equivalent for mass data storage) somewhere else?  

The data is stored on multiple RAID arrays, in multiple locations in climate controlled conditions, with backup power, protected by halon fire suppression systems, monitored 24/7, ...

My setup at home is auto backup from smartphones/tablets/PC via wifi to local NAS running 2x 2TB drives in raid 1 (mirrored) which also has an installed app which syncs selected folders to Dropbox.

Call me paranoid but we had a drive failure a couple of years back and nearly lost 10 years of pics holidays/wedding/kids ect. So now I take no chances

Might be a stupid question but, 'Cloud storage' as an alternative to your own HDD. Wherever your information is being stored not being some mystical thin air media, can't really be immune to mechanical failure? My assumption is that it would merely be in some other HDD (or whatever equivalent for mass data storage) somewhere else?  

 

Cloud anything is just a large collection of  (virtualised) servers.

 

Image your single operating system copied 4 or five times, and spread over 50 or 60 different computers all running at the same time. That's 'Cloud. Your stuff spread over the whole world several times all at the same time.

 

There are probably no backups as such since it can be argued to be it's own backup. If you were paying real money then you could buy a proper backup.

 

Drive failure aren't generally an issue since copies of your stuff is smeared over hundreds or thousands of disks multiple times. However problems happen when the technology that holds all this together (the hypervisor or the authentication services) goes tits up. That's when you get these big outages that happen.

 

The smearing of your data across the world is why is makes cloud hard to use in Europe since it can break Data protection laws.

Another vote for Crashplan here, agree with everything Chester said above.

Great little application sits on my 24/7 server and has been backing up non-stop now since 1st august this year. Only drawback is my poxy ADSL line with 340kbps upload :-)

Unlimited, encrypted storage that cost me £126.30 for 4 years ($189 for 4 year plan upfront).