Online Backup – Follow Up
A friend emailed me this morning asking for a recommendation about online backup options. I knew that I had posted before on this topic, so I was just going to forward the links to him. But in reading the two posts (here and here), I realized that I never posted the follow up that I said I would. Well…better late than never.
For people who don’t feel confident in doing technical things, I would still recommend Mozy.com. Also, if you have more than 33GB of data, Mozy is your most cost effective backup solution.
For those who can handle a small amount of technical setup, you can use the service that I use. My data is using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). The data is on saved on the same servers that run Amazon.com, and as a result have the same geographically dispersed backup system. They did have a recent outage, but nothing was lost. And honestly…for backup purposes, I was never concerned. The liklihood that I am going to need to pull something out of my online backup during an outage is extremely slim.
All that said…I have about 12.5 gig of data in my online backup (digital pictures and music make up the majority of the space). I think my charge from Amazon last month was $1.99.
The program that I use to upload/synchronize/download/encrypt my data is JungleDisk. It costs $20 for a lifetime license…and you can install it on all of your computers. So…I paid $20…I have it on my work laptop and my home desktop. Both of them are backing up. The nice thing is that if my wife needs one of the files (digital picture maybe) from my backup, she can go to the S3 backup through JungleDisk and pull it out. If I need a file from her backup, I can do the same thing. That has been very handy. It has an automated backup function, and is just all around very easy to use.
One really nice thing is that it is so cheap to simply try out. JungleDisk has a 30 day trial. And you only pay for the amount of space you use on S3. So even if you tested it with a gigabyte of data, you would only spend 25 cents for the first month.
One thing to be aware of…choose a good encryption key. Don’t use a simple encryption phrase…your data security is only as good as the encryption key. And…once you choose a key…don’t lose it. If your computer dies, and you don’t remember the encryption key…no one can help you…you just lost your data. Also…having dealt with a similar issue when my cousin died recently (link, link and link), it’s not a bad idea to let someone that you trust know where they can find the password/encryption key/etc in case you die. Your spouse/family might need it to be able to get to your data.
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 
yea and the cool thing with mozy is that you can try it out for free with the 2gig storage option, and then if u want more its only like $5 per month.