If you're patting yourself on the back for already having backups, do as the site says and practice restoring! It is a common mistake to set up backups but never test that they actually can be restored.
We're an online backup service that provides completely unlimited storage, external drive backup, versioning, etc. for $5/month. (And we're the Presenting Sponsor of World Backup Day.) We also open sourced our 135 TB Storage Pod for anyone to use.
If you're not backing up - please start! (Using us or something.) If you are, please help your family and friends who almost certainly are not.
Satisfied Backblaze customer here. It's unintrusive in daily use and the few times I've had to restore a file it was painless. The fact that it is remote also means that it is fire / theft / water damage proof.
Since we've got the Backblaze folks knocking around, here's the bits where I think it could be improved:
1. The initial backup can take weeks, and during that time tends to either saturate the ADSL line, or, if you throttle, runs too slowly to make decent progress. This is obviously a problem with any remote backup solution but it is also big pain point. I Wonder if you couldn't hook up with local providers with mega-lines (Apple stores for example, or some other large chain) where you could go do the initial backup for a fee.
2. I found restoring an older version of a file unintuitive - it would be nice to be able to see a history of changes per file.
I do find Backblaze interesting, particularly the details of the storage pod, but I always tend to read "unlimited" (commonly used in "unlimited storage" or "unlimited bandwidth") as "we won't tell you the limit unless you exceed it".
I just started using Backblaze last week, and so far I have been very pleased. Even with Time Machine, I found I rarely hooked up my external hard drive at home, so this gives me a little more peace of mind, not to mention continuous backup during the day at work, in case my laptop gets jacked on the commute home.
Backblaze looks like a great service, but like other cloud-based backup services, it does not store "your operating system, applications, and temporary files."
Out of curiosity, why is this? Are there copyright issues involved?
Under Linux, rdiff-backup is a must. I use it to maintains incremental backups since... ages. Under Mac OS, Time Machine does about the same (with a gui). rdiff-backup works on windows too, but Cobian Backup is good enough and free if you want a GUI.
What backup software do you recommend? I just want to keep my external hard drive in sync, but at the moment I have to do that manually. (I'm using Windows, and I'm trying to avoid having to use cygwin, so rsync is not really an option)
After much trial and error, I've gone with the robust solution that's never failed me:
robocopy.exe /MIR <source> <target>
Create a scheduled task, set your external drive as the target, and forget. robocopy.exe is a built-in utility for Windows 7 and can be freely downloaded for via the resource pack. Also consider an offsite solution such as Windows Live Mesh for the free 5GB to create offsite backups of the most important folders. Never know when a catastrophic event (theft, fire) can take out your backups.
Bvckup [1] might be of some interest. I've been using it for a couple of years and it's a setup-and-forget kind of software. It's a bit dated, but a newer version is in works.
Have you tried the built in Win7 backup system? It's gotten considerably better over the years. Acronis True Image is a commercial solution (~$40) that may be a bit overkill for your needs but it does a good job and is feature rich.
If that's all you want, I'm sure you can find a Windows equivalent to dd to run every day. Do a direct bit copy, and then your external disk will always be in sync with your internal disk.
Backing up in the sense of maintaining a full copy of your harddisk seems increasingly unnecessary these days. Most of the stuff I would care about losing is effectively already backed up on Github, webmail, Facebook, Steam, etc.
I don't think that counts as "backed up". Personally, I always try to make sure I have a mirrored copy of any of my data that I store with a third party, unless I feel comfortable with that data vanishing without warning.
Backblaze is the easiet backup out there. I don't have to tell it what to back up - it just knows. I don't know of any other backup that can do that. So, I definitely recommend Backblaze.
I'd love to take more backups, but is there a decent backup software (paid or free) for Windows? I have my doubts...
While I use the Win7 backup system on my WS it does make me feel a bit uneasy, I feel I have no control over it whatsoever. It doesn't do incremental backups. I have no say in how long they should be stored, the backups are stored in a weird way with hundreds of zip-files and I've found no easy way to browse them or restore just a lost file and I haven't even dared to use the restore options because I feel like I'm going to blow something up (so maybe you can do that, but the UI is just bad). Also I get no report that a backup was successful or if it has failed and I can't tell it to delete old backups).
I've used Acronis True Image before and I really wanted to like it but...
I used it to, among other things, back up some network drives. All was fine and I got confirmation that everything was fine every week, but one day I skimmed through the logs and found out that the network drives hadn't been backed up but Acronis still said that the whole operation was a success. I can't even begin to comprehend the absolute lunacy about ignoring some failures in a backup program. Maybe they've fixed this now but they have a long way to restore my trust.
Also when doing incremental backups you can not anywhere state that I wan't a complete backup after x incremental backups. You have to manually move the old backups to force it to do a complete backup again, and it won't delete backups older than x months/years so you have to manually clean up or else your backups will constantly increase for all eternity. This should be about the third or fourth feature you implement in a backup program and all it would take is like 10 lines of code and a checkbox.
So, still having a hard time to see how one couldn't be better than Acronis I stumbled upon EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation but you can't do incremental backups of your OS (seriously?), so I've resorted to doing incremental partition images but I'm mighty unimpressed by the GUI and I don't feel safe at all.
Seriously guys, this shouldn't be hard! I just want incremental backups of my OS (but a complete backup after x incremental backups and auto-delete after say 2 years), easy to do a complete restore or just browse old files and a working reporting system (even mail will be enough, just don't say everything is fine when it isn't). I can't imagine something being more simple than those basic needs and I've yet to find anything decent.
It would be nice to be able to take a daily backup for the last x days and then only keep one for every week for y weeks and then only keep one for every month for z months but I have completely given up my hope of finding something "advanced" enough to handle something like that.
I think this is one of those problems where it looks like a weekend, a week at most, job ... until you actually start implementing it.
That said, I would also love a backup system like what you describe. If it could also detect imminent HDD failure (say, the first bad sector pops up) and warn me that I need to backup my backups NOW. That would be splendid.
Furthermore, I don't really have anything to back up. Everything I actually need is stored on git/github, everything else is downloadable via torrents.
I take an occasional image of the hard drive to avoid needing a reinstall and use a combination of Backblaze and the Win7 backup for files. I'm very happy with Backblaze. Less so with the Win7 tool.
In any case a remote backup is a must. A local backup is also a good idea for a number of reasons, especially an image in order to get the OS and apps back up fast.
Windows Home Server is excellent. It backs up the 5 or 6 Windows 7 and XP computers in my house every night (incremental backup), and has decent customization options. I believe it also works with OSX.
You can then do occasional offsite or online backups of the entire Windows Home Server machine.
How can you sincerely suggest remote backups if virtually none of them provide privacy provisions? If anything, people should be discouraged from using remote backups that are not encrypted at source.
A remote backup can be very slow to restore, so having both local and remote backups may be worthwhile. It's more expensive, of course, so it's a judgement call, but it's too simplistic to say that everyone only ever needs one of them.
There are only three reasons to backup: Media failure, inadvertent modification or deletion, and loss in the event of theft or fire.
Onsite backup only covers you against the first two.
I have found that people tend to overvalue the value of their data to others and undervalue the value of their data to themselves. Having lost all my data in the third category, I can say I'm never going to bother with an onsite backup again; it's simply a false sense of security.
Remote backups are generally far more expensive – the monthy payment quickly reaches higher than the cost of hard disks. If you only told people of the possibility of remote backups, many would consider it too expensive and give up on backing up, whereas they might be comfortable with local backup.
[+] [-] chroma|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] budmang|14 years ago|reply
We're an online backup service that provides completely unlimited storage, external drive backup, versioning, etc. for $5/month. (And we're the Presenting Sponsor of World Backup Day.) We also open sourced our 135 TB Storage Pod for anyone to use.
If you're not backing up - please start! (Using us or something.) If you are, please help your family and friends who almost certainly are not.
[+] [-] benohear|14 years ago|reply
Since we've got the Backblaze folks knocking around, here's the bits where I think it could be improved:
1. The initial backup can take weeks, and during that time tends to either saturate the ADSL line, or, if you throttle, runs too slowly to make decent progress. This is obviously a problem with any remote backup solution but it is also big pain point. I Wonder if you couldn't hook up with local providers with mega-lines (Apple stores for example, or some other large chain) where you could go do the initial backup for a fee.
2. I found restoring an older version of a file unintuitive - it would be nice to be able to see a history of changes per file.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jubos|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aMoniker|14 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, why is this? Are there copyright issues involved?
[+] [-] wazoox|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jannes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gigantor|14 years ago|reply
robocopy.exe /MIR <source> <target>
Create a scheduled task, set your external drive as the target, and forget. robocopy.exe is a built-in utility for Windows 7 and can be freely downloaded for via the resource pack. Also consider an offsite solution such as Windows Live Mesh for the free 5GB to create offsite backups of the most important folders. Never know when a catastrophic event (theft, fire) can take out your backups.
[+] [-] ph33r|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://bvckup.com
[+] [-] icebraining|14 years ago|reply
Alternatively, for syncing and not real backuping (no timestamped snapshots, for example), I've used FreeFileSync[1] successfully in the past.
[1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/
[+] [-] trotsky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterhajas|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zakuzaa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShardPhoenix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gaiusparx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbenja|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jrgifford|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinwale|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjoff|14 years ago|reply
While I use the Win7 backup system on my WS it does make me feel a bit uneasy, I feel I have no control over it whatsoever. It doesn't do incremental backups. I have no say in how long they should be stored, the backups are stored in a weird way with hundreds of zip-files and I've found no easy way to browse them or restore just a lost file and I haven't even dared to use the restore options because I feel like I'm going to blow something up (so maybe you can do that, but the UI is just bad). Also I get no report that a backup was successful or if it has failed and I can't tell it to delete old backups).
I've used Acronis True Image before and I really wanted to like it but... I used it to, among other things, back up some network drives. All was fine and I got confirmation that everything was fine every week, but one day I skimmed through the logs and found out that the network drives hadn't been backed up but Acronis still said that the whole operation was a success. I can't even begin to comprehend the absolute lunacy about ignoring some failures in a backup program. Maybe they've fixed this now but they have a long way to restore my trust.
Also when doing incremental backups you can not anywhere state that I wan't a complete backup after x incremental backups. You have to manually move the old backups to force it to do a complete backup again, and it won't delete backups older than x months/years so you have to manually clean up or else your backups will constantly increase for all eternity. This should be about the third or fourth feature you implement in a backup program and all it would take is like 10 lines of code and a checkbox.
So, still having a hard time to see how one couldn't be better than Acronis I stumbled upon EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation but you can't do incremental backups of your OS (seriously?), so I've resorted to doing incremental partition images but I'm mighty unimpressed by the GUI and I don't feel safe at all.
Seriously guys, this shouldn't be hard! I just want incremental backups of my OS (but a complete backup after x incremental backups and auto-delete after say 2 years), easy to do a complete restore or just browse old files and a working reporting system (even mail will be enough, just don't say everything is fine when it isn't). I can't imagine something being more simple than those basic needs and I've yet to find anything decent.
It would be nice to be able to take a daily backup for the last x days and then only keep one for every week for y weeks and then only keep one for every month for z months but I have completely given up my hope of finding something "advanced" enough to handle something like that.
[+] [-] Swizec|14 years ago|reply
That said, I would also love a backup system like what you describe. If it could also detect imminent HDD failure (say, the first bad sector pops up) and warn me that I need to backup my backups NOW. That would be splendid.
Furthermore, I don't really have anything to back up. Everything I actually need is stored on git/github, everything else is downloadable via torrents.
[+] [-] benohear|14 years ago|reply
In any case a remote backup is a must. A local backup is also a good idea for a number of reasons, especially an image in order to get the OS and apps back up fast.
[+] [-] epikur|14 years ago|reply
You can then do occasional offsite or online backups of the entire Windows Home Server machine.
[+] [-] stephengoodwin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mchannon|14 years ago|reply
Onsite backup only covers you against the first two.
I have found that people tend to overvalue the value of their data to others and undervalue the value of their data to themselves. Having lost all my data in the third category, I can say I'm never going to bother with an onsite backup again; it's simply a false sense of security.
[+] [-] roryokane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
Oops, looks like I forgot
\slow grin\
[+] [-] budmang|14 years ago|reply