What’s it all about

Backups. Something we never remember to do, but always wish we had done when the unthinkable happens. Be it a hard drive gone bad, accidentially deleted file or lost memory stick, data is lost. Not a big deal if you have a copy. If you don’t, well, though luck.

As hard drive capacities keep on growing, backing up your becomes more and more important. The need for data backup isn’t something limited only to companies anymore. Nowadays consumers have just as much to lose: ever-growing archives of personal pictures, videos, important documents and other files that they value. Formerly you could just copy whatever you had to memory sticks or optical discs, but particularly optical media has failed to keep up with current requirements for storage space.

Recordable Blu-ray is still in the horizon for most people, so those hoping to backup all the data from their computer need to have multiple hard drives, an external drive, a network drive or something similar. If these drives have a high capacity, there’s always the little temptation to store something “temporarily” to these disks. This can lead to a situation where your backup drive has files that are not backed up anywhere else – in addition to your backups.

There are various ways to deal with backup. In the quick and dirty method the user selects the files to back up by hand and copies them manually to another location. This requires regular activity from the user and is far from being the optimal method. Backup software, such as Time Machine for Macintosh, tries to automate this process and make sure that backups happen on regular basis. In these cases, the files are often backed up to an external drive or another hard drive.

Fortunately, I’ve yet to lose data due to those things just mentioned. It’s bound to happen, though, sooner or later. When considering the many devices I own with hards drives inside them, luck’s been on my side. Nevertheless, my backup record has been less than stellar. I had the occasional document backed up now and then, but mostly just the really important ones. When I started writing my thesis. Then the data loss paranoia struck. Around then I read about online backup, and decided to try it out. I was happy with the service I initially tried (still using it, in fact), but noticed there were a number of other contenders as well.

Online backup tries to bring a new way of dealing with backup. As network connection speeds have increased, it has become a valid choice even for regular users. One can think of it as a way of outsourcing your backup. There’s no need to supply disks or other storage media, everything is automated. Instead of local storage, all the files are copied over the Internet to service provider’s servers.

Let’s spend a few minutes wondering the upload speed -issue. For example, finnish internet-operators are rather stingy about upload speeds they offer. You might have a balanced connection with 24 megabits for download and 1 for upload. So, when transferring massive amounts of data, you should keep in mind that it might take weeks for the first backup to complete. The following backups happen faster, of course, since we’re only transferring data that has been changed from previous backup.

It’s all good, but…

The online backup – model has a few considerable advantages:

• the backup process is automated and runs on the background
• backups are stored separately from original data
• large amounts of storage space availabe, even unlimited amounts
• multiple versions of files can be stored

(It should be noted that backup software like EMC Retrospect or Apple Time Machine provide some of these features as well.)

Not unlike life, online backup has its share of problems. Security in particular is often debated, and rightfully so. First of all, all the data you back up is transferred over the Internet. If said data is not encrypted, eavesdroppers might have a feast on your files. Fortunately nearly all providers use modern security methods (encrypting the data, for example), thus decreasing the risk remarkably. Still, if your provider uses terms like “state-of-the-art, secure FTP-connection”, be very afraid.

After getting through with the transfer, we’ve faced with another issue: storing your data on service provider’s data center. Who has access to data after transfer? In best-case scenario even the service provider has no access to your data without your private encryption key. Unfortunately this means that the data is unaccessible even for yourself, in case you happen to forget the password. Let’s just not forget the password, OK?

Some service providers default to encryption method that they can decipher, if needed. This way they can provide you a new password, and you’re able to gain access to your data even after forgetting the original one. The downside to this is, that the service provider can also provide access to your data for third parties, such as authorities, if requested. How big a problem or security threat this is, is up your own paranoia-level (Is the organization after me the government, the police, Illuminati, etc). Seriously speaking, though, this is an issue worth thinking over, if your data is not encrypted by your private key only.

Finally the ultimate problem: service shutting down. Yes, it’s possible. Happened this year with HP’s Upline service shutting down, for example. Just a reminder that nothing lasts forever, especially in the Internet. Same risk you’ll be taking with other services: Gmail, anyone? It’s a free service, and if Google chooses to shut it down tomorrow, you’re pretty much out of luck. Companies come and go, and there’s always some risk involved. As for online backup: free space may not be free in the future, so don’t rely on it. When selecting a vendor, it’s worth spending a few minutes reviewing things like their history, support and business model before making choices. Things like “forever” or “free unlimited storage” sound good, but talk is cheap.

Sea of Services.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can start getting to the point. There’s been a surge in online backup, as new providers keep appearing to the field. Vendors vary from smaller enterprises to big ones (like F-Secure and EMC). While it’s good to have options, it’s becoming rather difficult to determine the service that’s “right” for you. Most offer the same basic features, so it comes down to details.

I’m initially focusing on three different providers in this article series. First up is Mozy, followed by Spideroak and then we’ll see what Backblaze has to offer.

Heads up for Windows-users: I’m mostly writing things from Macintosh-user’s point of view. Windows-versions are available for each service, though, and generally the differences between platforms aren’t big, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Finally, the two questions that might have come up when reading this:

1. “I’m already backing up my data to a mirroring raid-array and also have monthly backups to network storage.”
2. “I don’t have anything important to back up.”

1. That’s nice. You take backup seriously. It’s still worth looking into the subject, some of covered services might just fit surprisingly well to your backup plan.
2. That’s also great. You’ve managed to obtain an admirable zen-like approach to computers and have achieved a situation where anything you do with your computer doesn’t matter to anyone – even yourself. Is this really the case? Think things over and check out the possibilities.

Published articles will be linked here.