Online backup
Posted on February 6, 2006
5 Comments
What are folks using these days for online backup options? There are tons of sites and options out there… and after spending a few hours looking ‘em all over I have to confess that I’m still in the “meh” mode.
Not to say I didn’t find some nifty stuff… I started with TechCrunch’s “Online Storage Gang” article. Checked ‘em all out, even signed up for a couple to poke around. Dunno if I should buy into his hype, but OmniDrive sure looks interesting. And in a closed beta. drat. I signed up so maybe some day I’ll be able to check it out. But really, of the sites I saw, I either didn’t like the fees or the capabilities or was just a bit underwhelmed. To be fair though, I do hope to find some more time to spend with openomy. While it really wasn’t the online backup solution I think I’m after, I am genuinely intrigued.
What am I after? Heck, I just want a little tray app that fires up once or twice a day and syncs the latest changes to an online storage facility.
I side-tracked a bit and took 15 minutes to look at Blummy. Neato if you’re into bookmarklets and/or managing a bunch of social bookmarking subscriptions. In those cases I can see where it’d be huge.
blummy is a free tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar.
It’s a kind of drop down menu consisting of widgets (called blummlets) that provide rich functionality. It works on almost every page on the web*. Just click on it at your toolbar.
Pretty slick. For the moment I’m not using it, but I [finally] just realized I could do a lot with it besided work with bookmarklets, so I may have to look a little closer. There are tons of “blummlets” available (blummlets – worst artificial name ever?).
Back to my quest for online storage options, I stumbled across Novell’s netdrive from an older Engadget article. Now this is genuinely interesting (and the usual Novell stealth marketed) software. I was able to use netdrive to very quickly and easily map a windows drive letter to my Comcast cable ftp account. Drag and drop baby! It didn’t go so well when I tried using the windows XP built-in backup though. Maybe I should’ve tried SyncToy instead? Drag ‘n drop a file and you’ll see you don’t get the typical windows copying dialog, so while this is very slick, I’m not sure it is “seamless” enough to use with robocopy or SyncToy.
I suppose for now I’ll just use my little USB2 hard drive enclosure with my old 40GB 2.5″ lap top drive for backups while I ponder the landscape. I’ll probably just set up batch file with a few robocopy statements to keep things simple. Or maybe I’ll do it with SyncToy. Such decisions… [I wrote about robocopy and SyncToy once before if you're interested in such things. That article seems to generate a log of google referrals.]
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5 Responses to “Online backup”
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Our company has been using this online backup solution for years now, and they have been pretty good. In fact IBackup had won the PC Magazines editors choice for online backup solutions. You should definitely give it a try…
Hey, I did try IBackup. It is good.
I was also frantically looking for a way to backup my personal, office and Quicken files. I stumbled upon IBackup and tried their free trial. I was impressed with their performance and decided to subscribe to one of their paid plans.
I use IBackup not just for backup and restore. I share folders and files with my friends and colleagues and send sharable links for collaborative access. I have also created playlists and stream my favorite audio content with it.
The big thing for me was I could do real time backup of a number of my Quicken files with IBackup for Quicken. It’s a neat simple application. There is no need to schedule it. Data transfer is encrypted and password protected. Nobody can filch your data. It’s a safe solution to your backup woes.
Have you checked out DataPreserve? I am trying to see if there is anything special there or if they are just another among many.
[...] Late last week I received an invite to try out Mozy, an online backup solution still in beta (natch). I had last looked at it, and other options, back in February when I trying to find something interesting to use for online backup and/or storage. At the time, Mozy didn’t really grab my attention… but frankly, I can’t remember what the details were almost half a year ago. This time around it did hook me in enough to have a look. [...]
Storage space is not enough – even if it is free. You should use an automatic online backup tool like Data Deposit Box… It’s not terribly expensive and you can back up as many PCs or servers as you like. Once you set it up, there is nothing to do. What good is online storage if you didn’t copy your file there just before your computer crashed?