Online Backup

Tristan’s Tidbit #4

After losing ALL of my music and nearly losing all of my pictures & other important files to an external harddrive failure, I decided to look into alternatives to storing/backing up all my data. I thought about buying another external harddrive for about 5 minutes. I then thought about burning 100 DVDs (the amount required to cover my important data) for about 2 minutes. I actually then installed another internal harddrive (they are faster, more reliable, and last longer than external hardrives) thinking I’ll keep a my files saved on both drives; before I realized what a bad idea that was. Backing up all your data in close proximity to your primary data is not a good idea. Floods, tornadoes, lightening, beer spillage, theft, clumsy friends, & HURRICANES could all easily wipe out both copies of your files. If you are someone like me who has most of your hard work in digital format, isn’t losing all your files a scary thought? The thought of it should send shivers down your spine.

I’ve come to the conclusion that online remote storage is the best option for backing up files. Here is a decent article covering this topic:

Why Back Up Online?

Most traditional backup methods copy your computer files onto some kind of media, be it an external hard drive, a CD or DVD, or a USB keychain drive. These methods are convenient and quick, and many (particularly external hard drives and DVDs) offer plenty of inexpensive storage space.

The problem is that most of the time, most people keep the external hard drives and DVDs in the same office or building as the computer they’re backing up. So, should a disaster–hurricane, earthquake, fire–occur, both the computer and the data backup could be destroyed.

There’s also the problem of theft, of course. Just the other day, I was reading the police blotter of my neighborhood’s monthly newspaper, “The Noe Valley Voice.” I live in what’s considered a safe area of San Francisco, so I was surprised to read about all the laptops and peripherals stolen from people’s home offices.

That’s why I’m a firm believer in online backup services, which save your most critical computer files on a secure, off-site server over the Internet. If you’ve backed up regularly online, you may lose your computer in a disaster or to a theft, but at least your key files will survive.

You may be thinking “I never thought of that. He’s right! I guess I’ll just sign up somewhere.” Try googling “online backup“. If you can sort through the 16,800,000 hits/hundreds upon hundreds of companies and successfully select a good one, I’ll give you a cookie. Lucky for you I’ve done all the research for you. Use ElephantDrive.

I have been testing them out for the past month and so far like what I see. Today I had a conversation with an online help person that completely won me over (I waited 10 seconds to get connected to the Chip):

[Chip] Hello, thank you for contacting ElephantDrive, how may I help you?
[Tristan] hey I have a couple questions
[Chip] I can help!
[Tristan] if I create an automated backup…
[Tristan] once it has backed up all the files the first time what happens
[Tristan] does it look for new ones and then automatically add them
[Tristan] or always recopy everything or what?
[Chip] It is the former. After your initial dataset is backed up, ElephantDrive does what’s called a continuous differential.
[Chip] There are a couple of processes involved in this, One watches your filesystem for things that have changed or are added.
[Chip] A second process respects the use of your internet connection and other local resources (such as memory, cpu, etc) and determines the best time and speed to upload your changed and added files to our secure facilities.
[Chip] A long way of saying:
[Chip] Once your first backup completes, your subsequent backups will finish much, much faster,
[Tristan] excellent
[Chip] A matter of seconds or minutes usually.
[Tristan] that is the correct answer:)
[Tristan] second question: “TrunkDrive allows you to mount the remote ElephantDrive data storage server as a local file system, just like a disk drive.
[Chip] Good! I love scoring well on tests.
[Tristan] is that possible?
[Tristan] or is that just the file explorer thing
[Chip] Yes! TrunkDrive installs a little mini web server on your Windows or Mac desktop, and acts just like a network drive.
[Chip] So you can use your native as tools to browse, upload, download, and direct use of your ElephantDrive.
[Chip] We have many small businesses that use TrunkDrive as a file server replacement.
[Chip] Still others who listen to the iTunes libraries or edit their Office documents directly on their online storage.
[Tristan] as a home user can I set that up?
[Chip] You can. Today it requires that you download and install 2 separate pieces of software.
[Chip] You can find them both here:
[Chip] http://www.elephantdrive.com/download/index.aspx
[Chip] I’d encourage you to try the service for free for 15 days and see if it meets your requirements.
[Chip] If not, there is no account to cancel.
[Tristan] Yup I tried it already and liked it as was…but now these features have won me over
[Tristan] plus its 10:30pm on a Tuesday and you are way too helpful
[Chip] Excellent. We’re always happy to have another member of the “Herd”
[Chip] Haha, thank you.
[Tristan] welp im out of questions thanks alot
[chip] Please feel free to reach out again should you require further information or assistance.
[Chip] Thanks again for being an ElephantDrive user!

I’ve since mounted the “trunk drive” to my computer and it is a truly awesome feature. I then had to sign up for the standard home account. At $4.95/month or $49.95/year you can’t go wrong. Most external harddrives cost in the ball park of $150-200 and they have an average lifespan of around 2 years (you do the math). There is a limit of 100gigs uploaded per month…but I would wager that 99% of you would struggle to upload that much data through your connection per month anyways. Ahh peace of mind.