Peter's Blog

Following my ruminations on online backup I'm giving mozy a try with the 2G free space plan. I selected 800M of stuff to backup and it's still working on uploading it. The signup wasn't problem free with one or two timeouts and the setup program was disdainful about my upload speed, saying it wasn't good enough but allowing me to proceed anyway. It will take a few days to backup everything. The backup seems to be interrupted whenever I use the computer (like Google Desktop Search) probably because Windows is so poor at multitasking disk intensive applications. How often do I stop using the computer for more than a minute? Not very often it seems (is it coffee time yet?).

There is a web-based interface that will let me restore files and would presumably let me download them to wherever I happened to be. It doesn't seem to let you view the files online in your browser which would be very handy, especially for pictures, you can only download the files. Overall it is not as flexible as xdrive promises but it could be handy one day.

Mozy adds a 'Mozy Remote Backup' virtual drive to windows explorer but for me it refuses to open: I click on it but the selection bounces away in buggy fashion. I presume it is supposed to show the folders and files I have backed up and allow me to restore them with drag and drop.

Maybe I should bite the AOL bullet and try xdrive. It would be more flexible even if backup was not totally automatic and didn't offer file versioning. It also gives 5G of space for free but I just cannot help feeling that AOL don't give anything away without a catch. Will they start emailing me .iso disk images?

What I should really be concentrating on is having something like Mozy to backup everyday work in progress and a source control system such as Subversion to handle the versioning of project files. That is the best option. The source control system only holds working code, I don't believe in checking half-finished rubbish in every day just so it is backed up. The backup system is there to save your behind if your hard disk goes down or you accidently delete a file.

Researching online backup solutions: really must backup family photos properly. Options so far:

mozy: 2G free or $4.95 a month unlimited. Automated backup and offers file versioning for a month which would be handy. Files accessable from web.

carbonite: a different shade of mozy, horses for courses. Trial account but no long term free account.

xdrive: 5G free which is enough. Creates a virtual drive which you copy files to however you like or run their backup software. Web based access to files from anywhere, file sharing, lots of nice features. What puts me off? It's owned by AOL

flickr: could just upload multiple G of photos to flickr but since they decided to force me to get a yahoo account I haven't been using flickr (yahoo or AOL, I don't want the hassle). Also the upload wouldn't be as totally automatic as mozy or carbonite.

site5: I could cobble something together on my site5 hosting account: I have about 14G free and ssh access so I should be able to do something but it will be a lashup that I would have to nurse along.

Being a dedicated backup solutions, Mozy or Carbonite would almost force me to do backups and do them well. With anything that looked like another hard disk I would end up with yet another disorganised mess. Less flexibility than xdrive could be a good thing. And by avoiding AOL and yahoo I stick it to "the man".