Glark

I finally set an off-site data backup plan in motion today. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we got word our old place in Toronto was broken into in the summer. I’ve always backed up my data to an external hard drive next to my computer. In fact I currently have two external drives going right now — one for incremental backups using Time Machine and one for bootable backups (a true mirror of my Mac’s drive) using Super Duper.

On-site backups are great for quickly retrieving a file you just trashed due to a brainfart or for recovering from a hardware failure on your computer’s hard drive. What they don’t help you with is fire, flood or theft. Once those copies are gone — you are screwed. I’m more wired then most people I know but everyone has a lot of important things on their computer they would really miss if it all went poof. Take a look through your drive and think about the info, photos, records and emails you could never replace. Ouchies.

This is where off-site backups come in. If you are disciplined enough your off-site backup strategy could be to burn a few DVDs every weekend and take them to Grandma’s house for safe keeping. Of course the one week you run out of time to do that will be the week everything goes wrong. What we need is something automatic, secure and relatively low cost. I did a lot of research and boiled it down to a few options.

Mozy

If the size of the files you want to backup off-site is under 2GB then this is the option for you. It’s free for under 2GB and $5 a month over 2GB (per computer). It’s definitely the cheapest option (no software to buy) but the Mac client is buggy and lack the features of the Windows version. If you just want to backup your emails I’d give this a try. More info at mozy.com.

Crashplan

Crashplan is a $20 piece of software that allows you to backup your data to another computer across the internet that also runs Crashplan. Everything is encrypted before it is sent out to the destination so the recipient can’t just open up your files and see all that lemur porn you’ve been collected. That said there’s still a lot of trust issues here and their website doesn’t fill me with confidence with gems like these:

What about a friend’s computer? — As we say in Minnesota, “You betcha!”. Many times we see friends backing up to each other. Another thing we see are talented and bright individuals protecting their families by allowing them to back up to their servers. These trustworthy and giving individuals are entitled “Data Heroes.”

I don’t have another computer or any friends… help! — Are you sure? It’s surprising how many people want to be your friend when you’re their backup destination.

Uh… pass. Warm and fuzzies and data integrity do not mix. If monthly fees scare you and you absolutely trust the people you will be sending your data to then give this a look. Crashplan does have an option to use their servers to backup to but if that’s your plan read on. More info at crashplan.com.

JungleDisk

This one operates much like Mozy does. It takes your data, encrypts it and throws it up on secure storage. Whereas Mozy sends it to that company’s servers, JungleDisk is just a software front end for sending data to Amazon’s S3 service (which I’m a fan of). For most people the price per month will probably be close to $5 and for powerusers you’re looking at about $10 a month or so. For those with multiple computers to backup this is a great solution. You can backup it all up to the same S3 account (in different ‘buckets’ if you wish) and when you buy JungleDisk for $20 you get access to all versions (Mac, Windows and Linux) so you can backup your mixed-platform setup to the same Amazon S3 account. Nice! More info at jungledisk.com.

I opted for JungleDisk because it’s giving me peace of mind without breaking the bank. I’m backing up both Mac and PC systems and honestly I’m more comfortable with my data on Amazon S3 than I am at the other options. Amazon isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. One last thing to keep in mind is that the initial backup takes days because you are transferring tons of data over the internet. After that it will only backup what has changed day-to-day.