It's been a year since I looked at my backup strategy. Having just rebuilt my PC twice in the last few weeks it was a good time to go through the review. It's a bit of a hodgepodge but it's automatic and works. Here's the tools I use and a high-level view of how I do the backups. Read the rest »
Reviewing My Backup Strategy
The days of using a few floppy disks to backup important files are long gone. In going through my website I realized that the information about my backup strategy was a bit dated and didn’t reflect how I do things. Going through everything in order to write this article would also help me be sure I had a bulletproof backup strategy. The goal is to have a solid backup solution so I never have to use a file recovery tool like Data Rescue II. So here goes… My Backup Philosophy [...] Read the rest »
No Longer A Mozy User
I’ve been a Mozy fan and user for a couple of years and had a paid subscription, at least until I recently cancelled it. At some point my backups stopped working. My tech support experience didn’t go well. While working on the issue I was backing things up to Amazon S3 (via Jungle Disk). After all the files were backed up to S3 and the Mozy issue remained unresolved so I cancelled the subscription. I will admit I didn’t dedicate a great deal of time to the problem although I [...] Read the rest »
MacMozy 1.0 Released
Mozy’s Mac client has left beta and is now an official 1.0 release. I’ve used the paid Mozy service since September and have been relatively happy with it. There were a few rough spots, like the last beta release (version 0.9.4) which failed to successfully complete a backup, forcing me to roll back to the previous release. But I’ve installed MacMozy 1.0 and it’s been running fine and completing backups. I currently backup over 120,000 files totaling over 3GB. My only real complaint is that selecting files for restore is [...] Read the rest »
Mozy Backup – All In
About 10 days ago I took the plunge and subscribed to the full (Unlimited) version of Mozy Online Backup. Since I’m using it for my iMac I’m using the MacMozy software. MacMozy was 100% reliable for the entire month of September and the software seems about ready to leave beta (my opinion, no release date from Mozy). All my test restores have also been perfect. I signed up for a one-year subscription to save a little money. If I cancel Mozy will refund a pro-rated amount (based on the full [...] Read the rest »
Jungle Disk & Amazon S3
I’ve been looking at Jungle Disk for online storage and backup and so far I like what I see. Jungle disk is a good example of a software developer that has built a service on the infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. In this case it’s the Amazon Simple Storage Service. Amazon S3 for short. Jungle Disk runs under OS X, Windows and Linux. I’ve only used the Mac version and everything in this article is related to the Mac version. Jungle Disk isn’t typical backup software and they rightfully [...] Read the rest »
Mac Mozy Online Backup Update
I’ve still been using the Mac client for Mozy backup and it’s a good time for an update. To recap, the Mac client is still a early limited beta. In this case limited means it was offered to anyone who asked to be notified when the Mac client was available. There’s no Mac documentation yet so I’m kind of winging it. Mozy sends files to the server in an intelligent manner. If you have multiple copies of the exact same file it only sends the file once, although it is [...] Read the rest »
Carbonite – Online Backup
I’m taking a look at Carbonite Backup as my next backup solution. In short, it seems almost perfect. (Almost – because there’s no Mac client although they say one will be coming in early 2007.) It’s the cheapest backup solution out there, $50/yr or $90 for 2 years with unlimited storage. (I just noticed today that Mozy changed their pricing structure and is now very competitive.) The software installation is quick and easy. Other software software and service vendors should take the hint. There’s a 15-day trial with no credit [...] Read the rest »
