FTP Backup solution

[Spinal]

So I've decided that it might be time to practice what I preach and backup my data...

As this is my personal laptop/desktop I want to backup, and as I have a hostmonster account, I was thinking of just copying all my data over....

Short of just tranferring it all via SFTP manually, does anyone know of a program that does it "properly"? (i.e. looks for changes on the local HD, copies the new data over and creates hard links to data that remained unchanged - all over SFTP or SSH)

Ideas?

 

[Spinal]

Ok, scratch this idea... just read the ToS and they quite explicitly ban using the space as a backup media.... doh!

The second best I can find is at $10 per month for 250GB (which would be great) but they wont let you download more than 25GB in any given month... so after your HD crashes, it will take you 10 months to regain everything...

 

[Soltan]

Given the falling price of hard drives have you considered just using and external drive? Either something dedicated with the software or just get your own drive and caddy.

 

[Sp!ke]

The point of a net backup is that your data is safe even if your house burns down.

Important paperwork people keep in a fireproof safety deposit box, electronic data of often equal importance, people seem happy to rely on either no backup at all or a cheap usb hdd that they keep knocking about in the bottom of their laptop bag.

Have a look at Carbonite Backup. £25 per year, unlimited backups.

 

[Ade B]

Have a look at Carbonite Backup. £25 per year, unlimited backups.

Looks like a great idea

Do you have experience of this - we back up to an external HD every week. It has the same file structure as our main PC (being effectively a duplicate) and it means that when the PC goes down (as it has) we can just copy the whole lot back and everything is where it should be. I seem to remember that most back up systems just store the individual files and not their locations - or have things moved on?


Ade

 

[Sp!ke]

It doesnt just take a snapshot but multiple versions of the snapshot so you can restore pervious versions of a file if you wanted to.

The restore process is simple and it remembers where the files were and puts them back in place for you if you wish.

Theres a favourable review here

 

[Spinal]

Given the falling price of hard drives have you considered just using and external drive? Either something dedicated with the software or just get your own drive and caddy.

My current backup is onto two hard drives. I use:

Iomega 250GB (ordering a 500GB) FW800/400/USB2 rugged (portable) drive for my weekly backups. This stays at home, sometimes in a fireproof safe, but mostly on my desk.

Iomega 1TB "aluminum" drive for my monthly backup. This stays at work in a drawer...

So I'm fairly safe... its just a large large pain to do it manually, as well as there's always the worry that the house burns down and the second doesn't work. etc. etc...

Remote backups I can still keep my personal monthly, but I've got that extra layer of protection where I know a professional company is taking care of it for me... (and in certain cases I can access my data from another machine...)

Sp!ke: I really really like the looks of that Carbonite! Its competitively priced, and I can get my main machines backed up for less than £100 a year! Thanks, I'm going to get that right away!

Michele

EDIT: While registering I noticed something; it seems to automatically choose to wipe any data older than 90 days. While not a problem for backup purposes, I now need to find a way to archive data Ideas?

 

[Sp!ke]

It only keeps 90 days worth of incrementals... this is normally enough, not sure why you'd need more really.

 

[Ade B]

It only keeps 90 days worth of incrementals... this is normally enough, not sure why you'd need more really.

I need to archive stuff for 15 years - now it doesn't sound so good...

Ade

 

[Sp!ke]

This means 90 days worth of changes.. meaning that changes to your backup are held for 90 days. If you still have the same file(s) on your PC which are available for backup then they are retained indefinately.

The 90 day figure would only become a problem if you didnt notice data loss for more than 90 days.

 

[bolide]

There are a few companies that specialise in Internet backup and there's even one - Mozy - with a Macintosh client

The real problem comes when you want to restore. Depending on the amount of data you have it may take days to restore . If you're a home user that's probably acceptable. But for a company it's likely to be too slow to be useful

Retrospect does good incremental backups, FTP backup & etc and also does data grooming so you can lose old versions of files. It does that in the PC version. The Macintosh version is as old as time itself and is pretty useless, despite it being a Macintosh product originally. I'm sure there are better PC-based equivalents

Nick Froome
www.pvision.co.uk

 

[Spinal]

This means 90 days worth of changes.. meaning that changes to your backup are held for 90 days. If you still have the same file(s) on your PC which are available for backup then they are retained indefinately.

The 90 day figure would only become a problem if you didnt notice data loss for more than 90 days.

Got that; that's why I chose my words carefully

90 days is plenty for a backup, but I like keeping an archive of all sorts of things somewhere (like all those old picturesthat take up several hundred gigs on my desktop )

Michele

 

[Colin_b]

Given the falling price of hard drives have you considered just using and external drive? Either something dedicated with the software or just get your own drive and caddy.

Indeed. I can recommend Acronis, very simple to use and reliable. Back up your disk image to a removable HDD quickly and easily. I keep 2 copies, one at home and a second at work.

A restore is a matter of minutes.