Online Backup - NO!

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Been seeing a LOT of commercials for online backup and storage with a monthly fee. Sites like Mozy.com and others. They charge a fee for 2 Gigs and up.

Do NOT buy into this! It’s crap. Not only are you exposing your data to potential hacks, but a DVD holds 4.5 gigs (DVD9 holds twce that)! You can get a DVD writer for 40 or less. The discs cost about 39 cents per blank (DVD5). So for a 50 dollar investment, you can backup your own data privately via DVD burns, and end up holding 100 times more data than any pay site with no worry about external interference.

Don’t buy into to it! Get a DVD burner and some blanks! Keep your data at home!
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
Totally agree. Heck, save up the monthly fees and buy your own Terra Byte station! Or something simular... still saving for mine!
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Totally agree. Heck, save up the monthly fees and buy your own Terra Byte station! Or something simular... still saving for mine!


My HD capture rig has 4 500MB drives set in a Raid 0 array for 2 Terabytes of storage. Sick!

But.........DVD and CD hard burning is better since an HD can crash. But, make sure you use good blanks as the dye can fade and render them hard to read. Typically, an ISO re-burn fixes that, but stick with good blanks like Taiyo Yuden, and it cuts the worries.
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
Sounds awesome! The one I want also has 4 500gb drives and a DVD burner with built in software for one touch back up.

Right now DW's laptop has dual drives, and she is only using half of the first drive none of the second, so I just back her up to her second drive, full image.
Mine has dual drives but I am using both, so I back up to 300gb network drive. Since each of my drives is 300gb and I have another 100gb stored on the network drive, I have outgrown it!
The kids I just back up to DVD, they don't have much on their computers anyway.
 

Miniman

Mini man - maxi food
Gold Site Supporter
DW won't buy into online storage - too easy for hacking.

We have an external hard disk
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
Keep a spare external HDD case around just in case. Laptop size if you have laptops, desktop size if you have desktops. If you get a system crash that takes out your operating system but the drive itself is good, you can stick it in the spare external enclosure, attach to another computer, and retrieve your data.
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Good idea!

They are also now [ame="http://www.amazon.com/USB-External-Enclosure-Case-Laptop/dp/B000FNBYKW"]making external cases for Laptop HDs [/ame]on the cheap. Not only can you pull your Laptop HD for use elsewhere, but you can buy more relatively inexpensive laptop HDs for mega storage. Just plug it into your USB port and away you go.



But still, always consider burning the most important stuff to disc as any HD can fail.
 

Adillo303

*****
Gold Site Supporter
I hate to be the voice of dissent here, but.

The problems with local backup

  • People forget to take it.
  • Media, even the best,goes bad.
  • Media is lost or damaged,
  • Any disaster that affects the house (Fire / flood, etc) will also wipe out your backup)
The pluses with a quality online backup


  • It is automatic, you don't forget to do it.
  • It is "off site" therefore impervious to local disaster.
  • A good backup scrambles your data before it leaves your computer around a strong key that YOU SELECT. Therefore hacking the data gets the hacker nothing usable.
  • It is not affected by hardware failure.
A good quality online backup costs, you do get what you pay for. I am talking about the levels above Mozy, etc.

Terabyte arrays, etc are great to store lots of data. Backup is another matter.

Andy
 

BamsBBQ

Ni pedo
Site Supporter
why not just back it up on some or one usb flashdrives. put it in a safety deposit box, there safe.

i have these ones

$11
31LPo%2B950oL._SS500_.jpg


$12 - 2 of these
318K2lethlL._SS500_.jpg


$3.19 on amazon
41kHJZN1wqL._SS500_.jpg


you get the idea..lol

most people do not need a terra of storage, a couple of these will do just fine. plus there is a new 32gig one that came out:mrgreen:
 

Adillo303

*****
Gold Site Supporter
I have three flash drives that I used to take programs, etc that I need for work (Computer Consultant). All of them have stopped working over time. I have bought good onws, I think. Corsair, sandisk, stuff like that.

Just an added P. S. Warranty replacement for these "guaranteed for life" units is difficult to impossible. They are not expensive, the data is sometimes not replacable.

Andy
 

Adillo303

*****
Gold Site Supporter
BTW Keltin - My son in law just told me about a laptop size drive that has a giant heat sync mounted to it, and is spinning at 10K RPM. The small surface area of the platter, and the 10K RPM should have an awsome transferr rate.

Andy
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
To me it all depends on the type of data you are backing up. I don't care for the online backups. Especially if your data is very personal. I would not trust it to any online firm. Making a couple DVD's of the data and storing one off site in case of a flood or fire is strongly advisable. Fire proof boxes are nice, but I fear the data stored inside of them would be destroyed by extreme heat.
External drives make it very easy to back up huge amounts of data. Music and pics can take up a lot of storage and would be hard to impossible to replace in case of disaster. External drives are cheap enough now to keep one at home for current backups and keep one somewhere else updating it on a regular basis ...depending on how often you add to your music and pic library.
I have multiple computers at home all networked so it's easy to copy data from one machine to another. Any hard drive can fail and I'll be okay as far as having access to my key data. It is the off site issue that concerns me most. I try to keep up to date off site backups but get rather lax at it sometimes.
Most get burned at least once by being lax about backups. Be smart and learn from others mistakes, backup backup backup. You can never have to many backups.
 

RobsanX

Potato peeler
Super Site Supporter
I make it a point to not go to websites that advertise on TV. There's usually a good reason that they have to advertise on TV to drum up business...
 

joec

New member
Gold Site Supporter
My home system I use 8 gig flash drive for daily backup, DVD/CD burner (I use Nero 9) and a external 300 gig HD. I also have 160 gig raid system. I've yet to even reach 25% of its storage capacity. I do back up daily though from my business machine to my home computer.
 
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