As disk space has become more affordable we have moved more and more data onto larger and larger drives. But as we store more the issue of backup becomes ever so critical. When we were just moving to a paperless office with all documents on a drive just a few floppy discs were sufficient to backup, I remember a time when all my data would fit on a single 5.25 inch floppy (1989). Then as photographs became digital there was an order of magnitude increase in storage needs that floppies could no longer keep up with so along came DVD backups. Then as music and video became common, the storage needs increased by another order of magnitude. Today we are talking about data that is crossing the terabyte limit. Local external hard drives are cheap and easy to use but do not satisfy the need for offsite storage, unless you rotate your drives to another location (office, friend house etc) this is fine as long as you maintain a rigorous schedule of rotating the drives. This is where I prefer the online automatic solution that is setup and forget. Let the machine do all the backup in the background. The first backup (of my Drobo) will take a long time but subsequent ones will be easier.

Getting documents stored online in the cloud was easy (scanning was harder), I just added them to my MobileMe iDisk. But as 1TB+ backup is needed this solution is not feasible. So began my search for a solution. No matter which solution I chose they would all need to be automatic, continuous, unlimited size at a reasonable price with version control.


Automatic, unattended, continuous offsite backups with version control are a must for every computer user. Don’t wait till you have lost irreplaceable data


Every college students computer should have an online backup solution installed, in case of laptop theft

These are my requirements:
1. Continuous unattended backup
2. No size limit in the cloud
3. Able to go back several versions of the file
4. Able to specify what is not backed up
5. Flat pricing

All the choices offer continuous background backup to a remote site. I wanted to back up my iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie libraries. My documents such as tax records and insurance policies are already off site on my Mobileme disk and did not need to be included.

Here is what I found.

Dropbox: Though I love Dropbox, I did not think that it serves as a backup solution. It is great for small file sharing/ syncing across multiple machines but not for 2Tb of data. Syncing my libraries was not he intention. Besides every machine would need to have that kind of space. I still use dropbox but not for massive backup.

Carbonite- unlimited space, reasonable cost $54.95 per year per machine, pay by the machine and not the space, but no external drive support. Immediately a no go for me. My backup needs are on the external drive (my Drobo). I have seen some reports of poor customer service on some online reviews. I think they took those reviews very seriously I did not have any issues with customer service. I had signed up for a two year plan before I found out that external drives were not supported and wanted to cancel my subscription. Their customer service refunded my amount with only email requests in a prompt manner. I thought they did a great job. If it was not for the lack of external drive support I would have stayed with them.

Backblaze- unlimited space at the same price as Carbonite, but could not backup individual files greater than 4GB, I really liked the very mac-like user interface, automatic backups. It did lack the granular control over what is backed up. It backs up everything and you have to specify what is not backed up. I does do version control but you first have to go to the date and find the file, most backup systems allow you to find the file first and see all the versions available. Seems good but not great overall.

iDrive- limited space, additional space can be purchased but 1TB was for nearly $800 per year! I needed >2TB for my home machine. Great for multiple computers in a small office with limited storage need. It can do continuous backups and has excellent version control. We use this at the office where we need 150 GB of backup for 4 machines.

Mozy- Owned by EMC the storage giant. Same price as Backblaze and Carbonite and have unlimited storage with version control.

Crashplan- Signed up for crash plan after seeing many good reviews. Not the most elegant interface. Very non Mac like. Slightly confusion structure. But it does have unlimited storage. Granular control over what is backed up and has version control is very detailed. The only one that also has support for backup to a local drive, a network drive, to a remote friends computer (I have not tried this out yet). This is what put me if favor of this over Mozy. So I signed up for the two year plan. With a few clicks I downloaded the software and the backup started. Simple to install and get started with enough settings for those control freaks.

I started backing up on Sunday July 25th at this rate it says I should have a complete backup in, get this 3 months. I know it sounds ridiculous but once the bulk of the data is up in the “cloud” then future backups will be much easier and faster with just file changes sent. Your backup time will obviously depend on your upload speed and your data size. I recommend not waiting till you have a huge data collection like mine before starting.

I will post updates in the future as the backup comes along.

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