(The title was shamelessly stolen from ArsTechnica)
A topic that comes up ones in a while in conversations with friends is how to backup important files, if at all. About two years ago I lost my home hard drive, with family photos and documents. It took some time to go over old CDs, partial backups, disks given to friends and files sent by email. Lot's of effort, and still some files were not recovered.
So I looked for available backup solutions, with the a few requrements:
A topic that comes up ones in a while in conversations with friends is how to backup important files, if at all. About two years ago I lost my home hard drive, with family photos and documents. It took some time to go over old CDs, partial backups, disks given to friends and files sent by email. Lot's of effort, and still some files were not recovered.
So I looked for available backup solutions, with the a few requrements:
- Access to backup files from several computers. Web access is nice but optional.
- Reliability - The service must never loose any file I store there. As an individual, it doesn't affect me much if the service is down once in a while, but I must have the confidence that once it comes up again - all the files are there.
- Trust - I want to be sure the service will be there for a long time (unlike MediaMax, Omnidrive or AOL's XDrive), and trust the data is protected and secure.
- Ease of use - I have no problem to do some initial setup, but after that it should Just Work.
- Functionality - ability to do scheduled backups and to see past versions of modified or deleted files would be a big plus.
- Price - I currently have some 10+Gb of photos and documents, so I would consider up to 5$ a month a reasonable cost.
After looking at some alternatives, I came down to a two-tier solution: Amazons S3 service for storage, and JungleDisk for user interface.
After building a very succesfull online business, Amazon decided in 2006 to rent its reliable and scalable storage infrastructure to the world, as a service. This Hardware-As-A-Service model proved to be a success, and today there is a myriad of services - from computation to automation of on-demand human work, all on a pay-only-for-what-you-use basis. They are widely used, from startups to Oracle and the New York Times.
With that in mind, I know the S3 service will be there for a long time, and that I get exactly the same reliability and price as the big boys. And as storage gets cheaper every year - the prices get lower. And when the service is down? They are very open about it, and respond very quickly. A 99+ percent uptime is quite enough for me.
Since S3 has a programmer interface, there is a need of a program to serve as a front end to the user. Since the storage is a given, the company writing such a program must focus one thing - providing the most features and having the best user interface. Such competition is great for me as a consumer - if a program isn't good enough, I can simply switch to another.
The winner for me was JungleDisk. The storage service looks just like another drive on a computer, where you can copy your files for backup (or back to restore). This can be accessed from several computers (so it can be used for transferring files) or from a web site (as an additional service). The backups can be scheduled any way you want, and the old versions of the files that were changed or deleted are stored for as long as you wish. The program costs a one-time 20$, including all future updates, which isn't much over a long time.
There are other choices of course. Dropbox (check the video) is another new S3 based solution, that might compete with JungleDisk - it has seamless integration, and allows to share files and folders with friends and coworkers. Other popular standalone solutions are Mozy and Carbonite.
If you still don't have your files backed up, do it now. It takes a only few minutes, and the cost for this peace of mind is quite negligible.
(A side note for 2 of my 5 readers: considering the time it took me to write this post, on a subject I know very well, I conclude Jeff Atwood must give up either food or sleep to write so much...)
After building a very succesfull online business, Amazon decided in 2006 to rent its reliable and scalable storage infrastructure to the world, as a service. This Hardware-As-A-Service model proved to be a success, and today there is a myriad of services - from computation to automation of on-demand human work, all on a pay-only-for-what-you-use basis. They are widely used, from startups to Oracle and the New York Times.
With that in mind, I know the S3 service will be there for a long time, and that I get exactly the same reliability and price as the big boys. And as storage gets cheaper every year - the prices get lower. And when the service is down? They are very open about it, and respond very quickly. A 99+ percent uptime is quite enough for me.
Since S3 has a programmer interface, there is a need of a program to serve as a front end to the user. Since the storage is a given, the company writing such a program must focus one thing - providing the most features and having the best user interface. Such competition is great for me as a consumer - if a program isn't good enough, I can simply switch to another.
The winner for me was JungleDisk. The storage service looks just like another drive on a computer, where you can copy your files for backup (or back to restore). This can be accessed from several computers (so it can be used for transferring files) or from a web site (as an additional service). The backups can be scheduled any way you want, and the old versions of the files that were changed or deleted are stored for as long as you wish. The program costs a one-time 20$, including all future updates, which isn't much over a long time.
There are other choices of course. Dropbox (check the video) is another new S3 based solution, that might compete with JungleDisk - it has seamless integration, and allows to share files and folders with friends and coworkers. Other popular standalone solutions are Mozy and Carbonite.
If you still don't have your files backed up, do it now. It takes a only few minutes, and the cost for this peace of mind is quite negligible.
(A side note for 2 of my 5 readers: considering the time it took me to write this post, on a subject I know very well, I conclude Jeff Atwood must give up either food or sleep to write so much...)
Great post. I'll be looking at these JungleDisk alternatives.
ReplyDeleteAs for Jeff, he mentioned some time ago that he is capable of 85 WPM, which means he writes as fast as he thinks. I think most of the time is spent on blog-QA.
Another S3 related alternative is ElephantDrive.
ReplyDeleteWorth considering if you are going to do a comprehensive review...
You should also check out http://putplace.com
ReplyDeleteJoe and Outsideshot - This is far from being a comprehensive review, but thanks for the comments - I'll take a look.
ReplyDelete.