Four solutions to backing up your data online
If you don’t have a backup plan for your computer you’re courting disaster. And if you’re in a disaster an external drive might get damaged. Fortunately there’s a variety of services out there for online backups, and they just happened to make it to Macworld 2013. Here’s a breakdown of the various backup programs which made an appearance on Macworld 2013′s expo hall floor.
Backblaze
We’ve already discussed Backblaze at length here. The program is built to make the actual act of backing up your data dead simple. So simple, in fact, that your grandmother could do it. The pricing is pretty simple, too: $5 a month for unlimited data. Backblaze currently building a mobile application, though it’s currently limited to iDevices. The program is available on both PC and Apple computers.
Dolly Drive
Dolly Drive allows users to backup, sync, and recover their data either locally or over the cloud. What makes Dolly Drive different from other competitors is its ability to archive the backed-up data as well. Imagine time machine on steroids. The service offers a plethora of plans, ranging from $3 and $5 a month for 50 and 100 GB respectively, to $22 to $40 for one to two terabytes a month. Uses can also sign up for one or two year plans as well. Dolly Drive is currently only available for Apple computers.
CrashPlan
CrashPlan is a comprehensive backup solution complete with a range of features for every customer from home users to corporate mammoths. CrashPlan does offer a slick mobile app allowing users to download files on the road and to sync files across many devices. The company’s services are scalable, coming in four flavors: CrashPlan, a free personal backup plan where you provide the storage; CrashPlan+, which allows you to securely backup your data to CrashPlan’s servers; and both CrashPlanPro and CrashPlanPro-e, which stores data for small businesses and corporate offices. CrashPlan is available on PC, Apple computers, and Linux.
IDrive
IDrive is our final entry into the data backup entries. This service, though, differs in that it allows you to easily share your data with others if you so choose. By integrating with Facebook and your email contacts, you can easily group people together to share one or more files you own. The files you backup, too, stay in your account until you manually delete them on the service. So you still have a copy of a file online even after you delete a local version. The service comes with three plans: Free, Personal and Family, and Business. Personal and Family starts at $4.95 a month for 150 GB. Business starts at $9.95 a month for 100 GB. iDrive is available on PC, Apple computers, Linux, and support mobile phone access.
February 1st, 2013
While backing up a few important files online is fine, backing up an entire computer to an online storage isn’t feasible. For the average DSL connection, it will take days to backup ~200GB of data. But for the most important data that changes often, online backups are great.
For the entire computer, cloning to an external drive works best. Clone two drives. Rotate them to an offsite location.