Cloud (Online, whatever you call it) Backup Services

tsmvengy

We had a recent hard drive scare so I need to buckle down and actually start being diligent about backups. What online services do people use and like? We have a few machines that we would need to back up. Thanks!

GnomeTank

Do you really want a "backup service", or just cloud storage? Are they all Windows machines or are there Mac's in the mix?

Feral

tsmvengy wrote: »

We had a recent hard drive scare so I need to buckle down and actually start being diligent about backups. What online services do people use and like? We have a few machines that we would need to back up. Thanks!

How many machines?

Workstations and servers, or just servers?

If servers, are they virtualized?

How much data total?

All in a single location, or distributed?

How fast is the upload speed for the Internet connection in each location?

Any special regulatory requirements (HIPAA, PCI, etc)?

(I may or may not have a suggestion for you, but nobody can make any good recommendations without knowing the answers to these questions.)

tsmvengy

3 machines, this is just for home use. Is there a benefit to going with something that's "backup" rather than just using OneDrive or Google Drive or whatever?

Shadowfire

Not really. If you work on your computers, something like BackBlaze or Carbonite is really nice because in event of a failure you can reinstall Windows and your backup will get you up and running automatically. But if you're just looking to store pictures and documents, OneDrive or Google drive is fine. If you pay for Office you get 1TB of cloud storage.

wunderbar

only caveat I would make to the OneDrive/Google Drive thing is that make sure it is not the only place you store the data. Cloud storage is not a backup if it is the only place the data lives. If you ever for some reason lost access to the account that data would be gone.

Use OneDrive, I do. but I also have copies elsewhere.

tsmvengy

wunderbar wrote: »

only caveat I would make to the OneDrive/Google Drive thing is that make sure it is not the only place you store the data. Cloud storage is not a backup if it is the only place the data lives. If you ever for some reason lost access to the account that data would be gone.

Use OneDrive, I do. but I also have copies elsewhere.

Hmm, that's a good point. I am thinking of using OneDrive to mirror some folders on our machines, but I'll have to look into whether OneDrive keeps past versions (in case of corruption or deletion from the source).

wunderbar

I haven’t tested personally but OneDrive does have version history, with a couple limits. History is limited to 30 days, and can only be restored through the OneDrive website.

Aridhol

I use a local NAS for backup and then back blaze for the remote storage. Costs me about 22 bucks a month but it's given me a lot of peace of mind.

Shadowfire

wunderbar wrote: »

only caveat I would make to the OneDrive/Google Drive thing is that make sure it is not the only place you store the data. Cloud storage is not a backup if it is the only place the data lives. If you ever for some reason lost access to the account that data would be gone.

Use OneDrive, I do. but I also have copies elsewhere.

Yep. A local hard drive in case the cloud storage account is lost. Cloud storage in case the house burns down.

Casually Hardcore

If you got some cash, setup a S3 bucket and a ec2 instanced you can invoke with files you want to back up.