jfriend
Oct-19-2009, 09:04 AM
On a tip from Andy, I started using BackBlaze (http://www.backblaze.com/) for online backup of my photos. For $5/mo (less if you buy 12 mos or more at once), you get unlimited online backup for any single computer. So far, I've got 94,471 files (322GB) backed up. Because of the speed of my DSL, it has taken awhile to get this much uploaded (several months), but it just works in the background 24 hours a day and you can control how much of your bandwidth it uses.
The local PC client that does the uploading seems well done. You pick what drives you want it to back up and then you can exclude directories, files or file types from the backup. By default it wants to back up pretty much everything. I decided to exclude a few things (like movies) so that the things I wanted backed up would get done sooner. It will back up any type of file - there are no limitations I've found other than max file size is 4GB.
I've done a few test restores and it gives you a ZIP file of the things you asked to restore. You can either download the ZIP file instantly or have it sent to you on a DVD or a USB hard drive. Downloading for a restore is free (the DVD or hard drive cost money).
Security seems adequate. You provide both a password for your account and an optional encryption PIN that is used to encrypt the data before it leaves your computer and which the service does not know. If you choose the encryption option, you HAVE to remember the encryption PIN you used because there is no way to restore your data without it - hint don't store it on your computer since you will need it when your computer has had a problem.
Running on Vista, I've had no issues with the background client running continuously. If it's uploading, I do choose to pause it before doing my own image uploads just so my uploads go faster. But, once your initial chunk of stuff is backed up, it isn't usually running.
Since I now have a lot of stuff uploaded and don't want to have to upload it all over again, the one thing I have to be careful about is not changing how everything is organized on my drive. If I moved lots of files around, it may have to reupload it all over again. There is a means for migrating stuff to new drives without having to back it all up again.
All-in-all, this seems like a pretty good service at a very good price and it seems to work well. I've only encountered one outage on the service when the backups weren't working. As it turns out, they were doing some extended maintenance on a weekend.
FYI, I'm still doing a full backup locally onto external USB hard drives, but I am going to get rid of my second local backup copy now that I have BackBlaze.
The local PC client that does the uploading seems well done. You pick what drives you want it to back up and then you can exclude directories, files or file types from the backup. By default it wants to back up pretty much everything. I decided to exclude a few things (like movies) so that the things I wanted backed up would get done sooner. It will back up any type of file - there are no limitations I've found other than max file size is 4GB.
I've done a few test restores and it gives you a ZIP file of the things you asked to restore. You can either download the ZIP file instantly or have it sent to you on a DVD or a USB hard drive. Downloading for a restore is free (the DVD or hard drive cost money).
Security seems adequate. You provide both a password for your account and an optional encryption PIN that is used to encrypt the data before it leaves your computer and which the service does not know. If you choose the encryption option, you HAVE to remember the encryption PIN you used because there is no way to restore your data without it - hint don't store it on your computer since you will need it when your computer has had a problem.
Running on Vista, I've had no issues with the background client running continuously. If it's uploading, I do choose to pause it before doing my own image uploads just so my uploads go faster. But, once your initial chunk of stuff is backed up, it isn't usually running.
Since I now have a lot of stuff uploaded and don't want to have to upload it all over again, the one thing I have to be careful about is not changing how everything is organized on my drive. If I moved lots of files around, it may have to reupload it all over again. There is a means for migrating stuff to new drives without having to back it all up again.
All-in-all, this seems like a pretty good service at a very good price and it seems to work well. I've only encountered one outage on the service when the backups weren't working. As it turns out, they were doing some extended maintenance on a weekend.
FYI, I'm still doing a full backup locally onto external USB hard drives, but I am going to get rid of my second local backup copy now that I have BackBlaze.