I have toyed with the idea of storing my data backups in the cloud for a while. Pricing and ease of uploading all of my data into the cloud have kept me from taking online data backups seriously until recently. Nowadays you can store all of your most important documents and data online for only a couple of dollars a month.
Why store your data in the cloud?
Storing your data online brings an onslaught of security and privacy concerns along with it, but I’ll save that discussion for a later time. Redundancy, ability to access your files anywhere from the web, and limited disk space are all reasons for storing your data online. It is important to note that when I mention redundancy, I mean that from an engineer’s point of view. Wiki defines redundancy as:
the duplication of critical components of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the case of a backup or fail-safe.
If you’ve been around computers for a while, you’ve probably had to replace a hard drive or two (or more). Because disk drives have moving parts in them, this makes them highly susceptible to things like shock, sudden loss of power, and normal wear and tear. It is for this reason that backing up your data frequently is so important. Nevertheless, don’t be too confident in having a single backup solution such as an external hard drive. That external hard drive is just as likely to fail. I mention this because I once had an external backup drive fail, which I had been using to store a lot of my data for years (a lot of which I didn’t have on my computer).
Storing your data in the cloud: Jungle Disk and Backblaze
Amazon S3 is one of the more popular services right now (if not the leader) for storing your data in the cloud. With prices like these (pictured right), you can store your most important data online for only a couple of dollars a month.
Jungle Disk (a division of Rackspace) provides a GUI that acts as a front for Amazon S3. You can choose to associate your existing Amazon S3 account with JD, or purchase and create a single or multiple S3 disks using your JD account.
Backblaze on the other hand, uses their own datacenter to store your backups. Backblaze is able to store more data at significantly cheaper prices because of the custom built servers that they use.
Just how much cheaper? I’ll let the pretty chart to the right do the explaining.
Pricing
The cost of storing 20GB’s on Amazon S3 is $3 per month (excluding data transfer charges). You can store as much as you want, but you have to pay .15 cents per GB a month. Want to store 80GB’s? It’ll cost you $12/month. Anything significantly higher than that and the pricing no longer seems so attractive.
This is all relatively speaking of course. Backblaze offers unlimited storage for $5/month. They keep copies of anything you have uploaded or changed for up to four weeks (JD will do the same but will charge you for the space required to keep those files around). Backblaze also lets you backup your external drives, but won’t backup your local Applications, Developer, or System folders just to name a few, which I don’t think is a big deal because those are all things that you can easily re-install.
File types and folders that Backblaze automatically excludes.
Jungle Disk lets you backup anything you want, as long as you pay for it.
Interface
The Backblaze and Jungle Disk applications are both well organized and thus easy to use. Backblaze installs as a preference pane option while Jungle Disk installs as an app in your Applications folder.
Backblaze utility accesible via the System Preferences window.
Both also offer the ability to browse your files and manage your account online. The web page that Backblaze provides is well organized and looks pretty, while Jungle Disk’s is dead simple and gets the job done.
Recovering your data
The neat thing about Backblaze is that they offer various methods of delivering your files to you. You can choose to download a ZIP file containing the files and directories you select, or you can receive your files on a 4.2GB DVD or 400GB external hard drive. The disc option is ridiculously priced at $99, while the hard drive option is priced at a reasonable $189, in the case that you need a full backup. When you choose to download a zip file, Backblaze will package the files and folders you select into a ZIP file and email you once the ZIP file is ready to be downloaded. How cool is that?!
Backblaze even provides an app for downloading your zip file (especially a large one), so that you don’t have to rely on your browser to download your file.
Besides using web access to recover individual files, JD provides a utility for selecting the files you want to restore. You can choose to restore your files from your most recent or older backups, with the option of restoring your files to the location of your choosing.
The backup
Both of these services are perfect for backing up your most important documents and preferences. It isn’t until you try doing a full backup that things start to get hairy for obvious reasons. If you have a normal DSL or cable connection, then you might find yourself having to wait a month for a full system backup to finish (especially if you have a ton of music and pictures). I was able to average 5Gb’s of backup transfers per day, and had to exclude things like my music and pictures since it was just going to take way too long to backup those as well (I have about 70GB’s of music and 20GB’s of photos). The full backup process would have been more fruitful had I been back at school, where upload speeds are much higher (it would’ve taken a week to do a full system backup, instead of a month with the mediocre internet connection I currently have).
All of this only applies to the initial backup of course. Once the initial backup is complete, Backblaze and JD will perform incremental backups of any new files that you create or changes that you make to a file.
Security
If you are concerned about security (which you should be, especially when it comes to storing your information in the cloud), both services offer the option for your data to be stored in an encrypted form on the other end, using a private key or password (both services automatically encrypt any data that is transferred over the network in the backup process).
Overall thoughts
Both are excellent products, and both excel at what they do. With that being said, you should consider the amount of stuff you will be backing up, and how often you plan on accessing your backup files. If you plan on backing up a TON of data, including your music and pictures, then Backblaze is the way to go. JD and Amazon S3 gets pricey if you plan on storing a ton of data (although some people won’t mind paying the premium).
Accessing your backups with Backblaze isn’t as easy (you pretty much have to use their web access to download or order a copy of your files) so you will probably only be accessing your files in an actual emergency. JD on the other hand, mounts your backup drive as a network drive, accessible via a desktop icon. This makes browsing your backup files really easy, and allows you to manually create folders and upload files manually, as you would with any other network drive. With JD, because you have Amazon S3 under the hood, you can use most popular FTP applications such as Cyberduck or Transmit (pictured below respectively) to connect to your backup drive and browse, download, or upload whatever you like. This is assuming you associated your existing S3 disks with JD. If you didn’t, then it’s a bit harder to access your backup drive using these FTP programs (you pretty much have to use the WEBDAV HTTPS option – if there is another solution please let me know). JD even offers an app that you can install on your USB drive, runnable on any platform (windows, mac, or linux).
I personally plan on using Backblaze as a fully-fledged online backup solution (so I can include things like my music and pictures), and JD to store my most important documents. Using a combination of these should have me covered from all angles. I already have a 1TB hard drive that I use to do my Time Machine backups with, but it’s something that I have to constantly haul around with me, and something that I normally can’t access from the web. It is also probably on the verge of failing pretty soon, since I recently tripped on the power cord and saw it fly across the room.
Questions
What do you currently use as a backup solution? Are you happy with it? Do you already use or plan on storing your backups in the cloud? This review was more of a brief detailing of these services, so if you have any other questions or think I missed something, be sure to comment and I’ll try to respond as soon as possible.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the informative comparison. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month looking at various backup/sync technologies. I’ve been using SyncBackSE to backup all my files on several computers throughout the house to one server, and then I’m using Jungle Disk / Amazon S3 to backup from that server. However, my photos and documents alone take up nearly 10GB and I’d like to backup my music too, so as you said the pricing no longer looks so attractive.
After reading your article, I think I’ll use SyncBackSE / Backblaze for myself (so I’m not paying for a license on multiple computers). As a side note, I’d recommend JungleDisk’s new Simply Backup software for anyone who just wants to backup a couple gigs of photos and documents…
Thanks for the comment Grant. I will have to check JD’s new backup software. I understand that they recently revamped their website and backup software, which I have yet to check out.
What you don’t mention is that BackBlaze sends you an unencrypted version of your files when you request a restore – do you really want your files to be decrypted on their side and then put in the postal system?
That’s a good point. Definitely something to keep in mind.