Keeping Your Data Safe, In the Cloud

Can you say with confidence your data is safe? If your hard drive crashed or your house burned down would you be confident your financial information and pictures of your cat Fluffy are secure? In my field there are few things as certain as the fact that most people don't think about backing up their data until it is gone. People have come to me sobbing over files they have lost on their usb memory stick or crashed hard drive. After they come to terms with the loss of their data the smart ones ask "how can I make sure this never happens to me again?" I'm glad you asked...

I find the best backup strategy, at least for home users is to have your data in multiple places. I have a desktop and a laptop and I always make sure my data is synchronized between the two. In fact, I have a little batch file using robocopy (part of the Windows 2003 Resource Kit) that runs every night on my desktop and copies all of my files from my desktop to my laptop if it's able to find it on the network. Recently though I have come to the realization that this may not be enough. We are increasingly going towards being a paperless society. Bills, receipts, medical records, tax forms, etc are all stored on my hard drive. If a true disaster struck and my house was destroyed I would be for lack of a better term, SOL. You would probably find me sobbing on the street corner because I have lost all of my data, just like that college senior that lost her final papers two days before they were due.

This prompted me to find a place where I can store my data that is not my house. What better place but in the "cloud?" If you aren't familar, cloud computing/services references any web service that runs in a decentralized, non specific location. Where the service is running or the data is located doesn't matter to you. All you need to know is that it is there, somewhere. Like many, I'm wary of these nebulous services since I'm so used to holding my data close to me. After taking a leap of faith and deciding to let my data go I did some research and came to a conclusion.

For being such a young industry there are a lot of online backup providers out there. I personally have tried Carbonite, Elephant Drive and Mozy. The big features you are looking for when choosing a backup service is cost (usually per gigabyte), available storage, encryption, platform support, speed of backups and recovery and file type support. Each service I tried supports strong encryption as well as PCs and Macs.

Carbonite offers a free trial and on the surface seemed to fit the bill for me. What they don't tell you is you can only backup file types they have approved. Of course this covers the usual Microsoft formats, PDFs and most other document types but files that are generally larger in size like ISO (CD and DVD image files) are not supported. In my opinion if you are paying for storage you should be able to store whatever you like so Carbonite was taken off the list.

Edit 6/7
Carbonite's Chairman and CEO, David Friend contacted me to kindly correct this statement regarding Carbonite's file type/size support. While Carbonite does not automatically backup large files in a selected directory (see the message to the right) it is possible to mark individual large files for backup manually. David also disclosed a few pieces of information that are not readily apparent on Carbonite's website. First, your data is kept for 90 days after it is deleted from your computer (compared to Mozy's 30 days). Also, when restoring files via Carbonite's web interface you are able to access them immediately. You do not have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for them to be retrieved. I would recommend those interested in an online backup solution take a closer look at Carbonite as a serious competitor to Mozy.

Elephant Drive was next on the list. They offer unlimited storage for $5 a month which is very attractive. After signing up for a free trial I noticed the maximum file size was 1 gigabyte. That didn't bother me since I have few files that large and I don't really need to back them up. Unfortunately I found their software to be bulky and slow. Uploads to their servers timed out frequently and I wasn't able to get much data uploaded. It was struck from the list after 10 minutes of futzing with it.

Of course I saved my personal favorite for last. Mozy also offers the $5 a month unlimited plan and you pay even less if you prepay for a year or two of service. They do not have file size or type restrictions which is more true to the definition of unlimited storage. Their software performs its function well, after using it for several months I have never had a problem with it. You can restore your files directly from the installed client or use the web interface. The web interface is not immedaite. If you request a restore from the web it takes a few minutes for it to be available. This is most likely done in part to prevent people using it like a file distribution service. Mozy also offers a service where they will burn requested files to a DVD and FedEx them to you. While it costs a pretty penny, it is great if you need large quantities of your files (i.e. after a natural disaster) quickly and can't wait to re-download them to another computer. One important caveat with Mozy is it only keeps your data for 30 days after it is backed up. Once you delete a file it is only able to be restored for 30 days after it has been deleted. For most home users this isn't a problem but some may find they need a much longer history. Mozy does this to prevent people from taking advantage of it's unlimited storage plans by uploading up hundreds of gigabytes of files once and then deleting them off their hard drive.

The only way to get everything everybody wants is to pay for storage by a flat, per gigabyte rate. That way there are no restrictions or extra fees. Amazon S3 offers basic cloud storage which can be paired with services like Jungle Disk to provide a more customizable solution. If you're a "power user" (i.e. you have several dozen gigabytes of data to back up) you will probably end up paying a bit more but you can get all of the features you want. For home users that just want another place to put their data my personal recommendation is Mozy.