Backing up my backups. Offsite or cloud?

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 09-15-2009, 07:59 PM

I back up my computers onto my Drobo. It's redundant, so I have little to worry about if one or more drives go bad. But lately I've been worrying about losing my stuff through theft as well as hardware failure. It would suck to have my computer and Drobo stolen. Poof! All my photos and documents for the last 20 years, gone. I'm considering the following two options

Make an additional backup in the cloud using an online storage solution.
Buy a large external hard drive to back up the Drobo once a month and store it off-site.

I'd like to hear people's opinions of both.

I like the idea of being able to backup to the cloud, but frankly wonder how it's even possible given the size of the backup and cable companies finickiness about bandwidth usage. After the initial backup, the incrementals will become much smaller, but even so keeping 300GB of backups in the cloud is a bit daunting, not to mention I'm not sure there are reasonably priced solutions that allow that size. MobileMe, as an example, only allows 20GB of storage.

Seems like buying additional hardware to store off-site has fewer obstacles and easier restores in case of something bad happening. The only time I would have to worry would be if my hardware is stolen and the off-site hardware fails at the same time--even I'm not that paranoid.

**ScratchMonkey** · 09-15-2009, 08:16 PM

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/tags/backup.html

**Dick Blonov** · 09-15-2009, 08:56 PM

On-line backups are great, but slow. Backing up 1TB of data at 1 mbps upload is rather grueling (unless your talking incremental). I went for off-site.

DB

**asch** · 09-15-2009, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by Twisted_Firestarter

I back up my computers onto my Drobo. It's redundant, so I have little to worry about if one or more drives go bad. But lately I've been worrying about losing my stuff through theft as well as hardware failure. It would suck to have my computer and Drobo stolen. Poof! All my photos and documents for the last 20 years, gone.

All I can say is using an online backup service saved my arse when my house caught on fire. All of my computers were damaged. I've used mozy.com for several years now without any issue. For $4.95 / month you get unlimited storage. It took several weeks to get everything backed up initially, setting mozy to run when my computer was idle.

I have not found a better service for the price and peace of mind.

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 09-15-2009, 10:05 PM

Lol Scratch...the first two of those tag searches are just threads that start with you pointing to the same backup tag search. In addition, the ones I glanced through were talking about several gigs of space, not nearly what I'm considering. Finally, I was more interested in the comparison of the two formats. While Mozy looks very interesting, I'm still not convinced it is a workable solution considering it would probably take me a week or so to backup my data initially and then having to worry about my ISP cutting off my account for excessive bandwidth usage. Thus the reason I started a new thread...

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/tags/backup.html

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-15-2009, 11:49 PM

Originally Posted by Dick Blonov

On-line backups are great, but slow. Backing up 1TB of data at 1 mbps upload is rather grueling (unless your talking incremental). I went for off-site.

DB

Agreed. I'd also suggest off-site stored backup rather than some cloud service unless you have a amazingly fast upload rate or don't mind waiting a week or two for a complete backup of your Drobo.

Although you might need some space somewhere else to store the backup of the backup, it'll save you hassle and time in the long run. Like your said, if you lose your connection, you'd have to find some other way to get at your data if you used a online service. If you just stored the backup #2 at a off-site location, all you'd have to do is go get the HDDs and transfer the files you need back onto your computer (or new computer).

With how much data I need to backup on my own computer (500 GBs) and that of the home's entire network of computers (> 2 TBs), online cloud services simply don't give enough space to back it all up and with my slow upload speed (40 KB/s), it'd take months to backup even a terabyte.

**ScratchMonkey** · 09-18-2009, 03:27 PM

Originally Posted by Twisted_Firestarter

Lol Scratch...the first two of those tag searches are just threads that start with you pointing to the same backup tag search. In addition, the ones I glanced through were talking about several gigs of space, not nearly what I'm considering. Finally, I was more interested in the comparison of the two formats. While Mozy looks very interesting, I'm still not convinced it is a workable solution considering it would probably take me a week or so to backup my data initially and then having to worry about my ISP cutting off my account for excessive bandwidth usage. Thus the reason I started a new thread...

I only do that because I want to know why the new thread is different from all the old ones. It's the kind of thing I want to see in the subject and the first post.

I know many hate thread necromancy, but my preference is to add to and refine old threads unless the question is fundamentally different from the old content. I see old threads as being like a good vinegar or sourdough "mother", something to keep alive and cherish.