Who would you recommend for automatic file backups?

[Malkin]

I would like to setup some sort of automatic online backup for our files. We have about 35GB that I would like backuped (is that a word??) automatically.

What service have you used or had experience with that you would recommend?
:signs101:

 

[CanuckSigns]

i'm not positive that online backups can handle 35GB of transfers, seems like it would take far too much time to upload. how often would you be backing up?

 

[Techman]

35 gigs would take weeks for online.
Then when if you ever need it back it will take weeks to get it all back.
I billed a client for over 20 hours one time because he insisted on an online backup. I had to wait 20 hours just to get one directory.

Get genie software for auto backups on your back up drive. Do it in house and use the autopilot software.

 

[AUTO-FX]

the initial back up would take a while, but it could be done at night. then any future back ups would only be files that have changed or added and could also be set to run at night. i was just yesterday looking into it - seems Carbonite is reasonable. Norton offers it also, but i didnt call to get a price. Online it's 59 for 2 gigs, but they dont say what the additional per gig rate is. if you go with a hard drive, you need to remeber to take the thing home with you when you leave. If you dont and there's a fire....

 

[rfulford]

I agree with techman. I would look at Genie Timeline. It is essentially the window's equivalent of Time Machine on OS X. You can back up to several types of media. The pro version even has an option to back up to a ftp site if you want an offline backup.

http://www.genie-soft.com

 

[Dice]

We use Genie as well.

 

[Malkin]

Mozy was at the top of the Google search results. They say that you upload it once, then only things that are changed or new are uploaded after that. Rates were $3.95/month + $0.50 per gig.

I guess I wanted something off-site that I don't have to think about. Set it and forget it as the infomercial went.

I appreciate any and all opinions though.
:U Rock:

 

[Techman]

use your own system and set up a FTP if you insist on having an offsite backup.

That is essentially all those other online backs are. They are simply an FTP server. FTP your stuff to the house, IF you ever need it. You can burn a file to DVD.

In all the years i've been around computers,, I have never observed a need to pay for an online back up system.

 

[oldgoatroper]

I would never trust an online backup service to be there 100% of the time.

Here's what I would do.

Get a couple of 2-TB external drives at Costco. You can get smaller ones, sure, but why?

Get FolderClone from folderclone.com

Setup an automatic nightly backup to one of your external drives. Take the other one home with you so you have an off-site backup that is no more than 1 day old. Swap drives every day.

A few weeks after we started this, we had a fire one night -- smoke damage mostly but the FD wouldn't let us in to work for the day -- so I just took the external drive home and continued working almost like nothing happened.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

use your own system and set up a FTP if you insist on having an offsite backup.

That is essentially all those other online backs are. They are simply an FTP server. FTP your stuff to the house, IF you ever need it. You can burn a file to DVD.

In all the years i've been around computers,, I have never observed a need to pay for an online back up system.

+1

The idea of storing GBs of files online turns my stomach.

Over the weekend, I wrote a small article about backups. It might be worth your time to read:

http://hotwiredtech.com/blog/

 

[signage]

I would look into getting two T-bit external drives, and get Acronis and do them my self. With acronis you could have your system back up and running in a couple of hours!

 

[AUTO-FX]

sounds cool. Malkin, maybe THATS what we should do.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Mozy was at the top of the Google search results. They say that you upload it once, then only things that are changed or new are uploaded after that. Rates were $3.95/month + $0.50 per gig.

I guess I wanted something off-site that I don't have to think about. Set it and forget it as the infomercial went.

I appreciate any and all opinions though.
:U Rock:

But what you don't understand is that your Internet connection is EXTREMELY slow compared to your local area network (LAN). It will take FOREVER to load the files up to the server even once. Then when you do need them back (in the event you need to restore the backup), it will take FOREVER to get them back from their server.

These services are great for the average home or small business user dealing in Word and Excel files, but not for folks storing graphic image files. You are shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[royster13]

I use Carbonite and a Seagate Replica drive.....I like the Carbonite so I have online access to my files anywhere if the need should arise.....But yes it does take "forever" to download a bunch of files.......

 

[Slamdunkpro]

I still use tape, 400gb to tape takes about 12 hours and it's off to offsite storage. Remember that these online backup services are just that - backups, not archives, they roll over every so often - a photographer friend found this out the hard way went online looking for an image and it was gone.

 

[Malkin]

Thanks, Casey, for that insight & blog post. That was good timing and I can easily see that doing it ourselves would be better.

oldgoatropers's suggestion seemed like it would fit the bill for us. I could set it up to be automatic, and just remember to take a drive with me when I left for the day.

We have about 6 computers networked together with all the shared customer files sitting on just one of them (mine). I know we need to move toward having an actual file server, but I have no idea how to go about setting one up... some day.

 

[iSign]

Thanks, Casey, for that insight & blog post. That was good timing and I can easily see that doing it ourselves would be better.

oldgoatropers's suggestion seemed like it would fit the bill for us. I could set it up to be automatic, and just remember to take a drive with me when I left for the day.

We have about 6 computers networked together with all the shared customer files sitting on just one of them (mine). I know we need to move toward having an actual file server, but I have no idea how to go about setting one up... some day.

Casey made a suggestion to me last year & it has made my life easier... I was using a Dell server, and all my workstations wrote files to it, but I also ran quickbooks on it, so any workstation could work from & write to the same one set of books...

...anyway, for some reason there were frequent hiccups causing the need for server restarts... which often slowed down (and required saving & waiting) operations from each employee & workstation..

...so he suggested a "Buffalo Tera-Station" which works like the server did for my files, but with 2TB or storage capacity, and another 2TB RAID image (forgive my terminology if incorrect... I don't talk about this crap... I just need it)

...anyway, I've had virtually seamless operation for over a year, in place of a situation that caused me no end of grief.

(anyone want to buy a Dell server, running Windows Server 2003 OS?)

 

[joeshaul]

It would take me approximately 12 full days to upload my company folder to somewhere, realistically about 20 days given lag spikes/cattle running over fiber optic lines/trains derailing on fiber optic lines/dugway or delta afb bombing fiber optic lines. This is with 5 megabit down, 1 megabit up, and an 80 gibibyte folder (~85 gigabyte'ish), not including some convoluted packet header or any other headers (like SMB which I seem to recall being half useless crap, half actual data, which would double the duration, and is why people prefer FTP). That's essentially 20 days of me being offline, when you use your upstream, you don't get anything down, the connection will choke trying to send DNS resolutions and the like as it's sending all that other data, and you'll feel like you timewarped back to 1996 and wondered if someone picked up the phone and knocked you offline cause your page only half loaded.

My solution:
I bought a 300 gig external hard drive about 3 years back for $100, I just do a full backup to it before I leave work on the 1st of the month, the next day I unhook it and take it home. I'm able to have about 3 versions currently, although I started off with like a whole year before I had to start removing old backups. Newegg had a deal on an external 2 terabyte hard drive for $107 over the weekend that I almost bit on, but will probably need to shell out some cash in the near future for a new external, then a few more months down the line replace my internal. I've thought about NAS, but my design computer is the base of operations and I don't know if I could handle saving some of the files I'm working on across the network (think the biggest file I've had open was a 2 gig file, bleh that's such a pain in the arse when the autosave kicks in and stuff locally, can just imagine the fun over NAS).

 

[SignBurst PCs]

I've thought about NAS, but my design computer is the base of operations and I don't know if I could handle saving some of the files I'm working on across the network (think the biggest file I've had open was a 2 gig file, bleh that's such a pain in the arse when the autosave kicks in and stuff locally, can just imagine the fun over NAS).

Yep, this can be a problem. But, it is pretty easy to copy the file to your desktop, work, save back to desktop, move file back to server (or NAS) at the end of the day or when you are done.

 

[joeshaul]

Yep, this can be a problem. But, it is pretty easy to copy the file to your desktop, work, save back to desktop, move file back to server (or NAS) at the end of the day or when you are done.

Yeah, I've done similar when I've needed to make on the fly adjustments at my RIP station. I share my company drive as read only with a writeable "updated" folder, so that I don't accidentally overwrite something on the RIP station, or have the issue of the file being open twice and losing updates. Unfortunately my issue is I leave tools/etc sitting around and get sidetracked easily ("oohhh sparklies, that reminds me, I need to go work on this!"). I think there are some software solutions available, much like CVS/SVN where you can loan the file out until you're done. If my business grew to where I had multiple designers I'd definitely find a better solution or set up something a bit more friendly (although my directory structure is probably the cleanest thing out of all my filing/etc).