@NikFromNYC: I'll give you a 9.8 on this. The information is almost entirely excellent. The stuff on enclosures (which is overlooked by most of us, at least until now) is UNQUESTIONABLY excellent, and truly useful.

I only dispute your comments about over-the-wire backup. Given a reputable company at the back end, and the foresight to create a bootable disk that can get you as far as restoring your system (Ghost is good for this (and if there is a good open-source version of Ghost I'd love it), although if you boot with UBCDwin or the like you can pull back enough to get going), I see advantages: Offisite backups done in the background without intervention, for people who cannot be made to learn about swapping tapes or taking a USB drive outside the building. Done properly worth a metric buttload.

I will grant you that the "givens" are not trivial in the above, but also not out of the realm of possibility for someone doing a little research once.

ps61318

sorry, my solution works better.

custom nas box with twin drives in a raid 1 solution then backed up nightly / weekly to strongspace via rsync + ssh.

allows me to have backup offsite copies of only the stuff i want offsite without the other stuff my fiancee saves to it (god knows what that is ;-).

good kit though,

[www.red91.com]

indiehead

@shamoononon: Gas money! I can't believe I forgot about that! Oh wait, I live in NYC. My monthly gas expenditure is $0. If you did drive, I hope this wouldn't be your only trip.

If you want to get picky then lets talk about the electricity it takes to run this NAS 24/7.

@flyboy: In the SDB contract it guarantees electronic data integrity. I even asked what that alluded to. Among other things, they don't have huge magnets around that would wipe laptops, HDDs and other devices sensitive to magnetism. I get the feeling you guys are just shrugging this idea off, but I'm telling you its perfect for folks who want to keep data secured off site and don't have the need to back up their computer continuously. Plus, you don't have to worry about hackers like in a remote server because your data is off the grid so to speak.

N@tedog

Be slightly aware that this SPECIFIC enclosure, besides having a two speed blue-led lit fan is also PRONE TO HAVING BAD CIRCUIT BOARDS in in a dual sense. First instead of the robust Oxford 911 chipset (controller) that allows Firewire chaining, the ones I got contained a Prolific TYPE A chip. That chip (unlike later B,C,... models) is *NOT* firmware upgradable, and is Firewire chaining retarded, so I had to return the drives (TigerDirect promised to pay shipping then, delayed a month to ship me any UPS return label, then made me pay for the shipping). I inspected the circuit boards. Half the salty solder flux had not been washed off. Buying things like this through Amazon is a good idea, due to their no-nonsense return policy, but eventually I found a much better company, Rocstor, that though lacks a fan so can't be stacked, has NO BRICK (!), works like a charm, but costs twice as much ([www.google.com]). One source sells just the enclosure, and each comes with it's own shoulder bag (!), oddly enough. Drive makers like WesternDigital often have deals on their web sites for cheap drives. But beware cheap ENCLOSURES. The very first batch of cool retro looking enclosures I got had power cords that slipped out if you sneezed in their direction, which causes write heads to crash. Everything else out there is plastic and molded to look like a stupid alien spaceship. The drives inside are fine, but the enclosures can screw you over. The stand-alone LaCie ones are fine, but despite using a HUGE BRICK, overheat as a rule.

So now *this* company offers this crappy drive and online backups? How about buy two drives instead and swap them each week, so any given week you have a week and two week backups in DRIVES YOU CAN ACTUALLY BOOT FROM?! How can I boot my computer from a web site?

NikFromNYC

Alternative caption: "What's a billionbyte?"

Collins1

500 billion bytes? That's got to be... like... 500 billion gigabytes!

Collins1

@DCGaymer: You can, but check out the prices. $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used would be $75 a month if you use all 500GB. Not counting bandwidth charges.

Jason Chen

Couldn't you just sign up for Amazon Simple Storage Service?
[www.amazon.com]

DCGaymer

I'd say the best thing about this setup is the shipping of devices to get the initial backup going. I'm considering some type of internet backup and that would be a requirement.

If you want basic, but unlimited storage for $5 a month, check out fabrik: [backup.fabrik.com]

I personally have 2 external drives that I swap often, keeping one off site. SyncBackSE updates the backup drive every night, optionally keeping versions of every changed file.

ThirdType

Dear anonymous third-party storage provider, here is all my personal data. Please be good with it, and don't peek or anything! Also, I hope you don't mess up and accidentally let other people see it somehow. But I doubt that would happen. Thanks!

matto

Well that initial cost also covers some of the hosting credit. 100GB is around $12.50 a month on GoDaddy, so the 100GB drive isn't that great of a deal, but $25 a month for 500GB of automatic, guaranteed backup space? That's pretty sweet.

Ethan Allison

I have to warn people about this: Almost 2 years ago, I bought this Buffalo external HDD, 300Gb, LAN only.

About 3 months later, the LAN connection failed.

I had the worst nightmare trying to figure out how to retrieve my data... not only I was in a laptop-only situation, I was using the drive to store almost 300Gb of data... part of it was personal documents and stuff.

Only after it was already too late, I found out the HDD used ext2 file system.

Nowadays I never buy an external HDD unless it also offers a standard USB connection.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

10/100 is a pretty big "NO!" when you are talking about a backup drive. regardless of believing it is fine and justifying it somehow.

these days the average computer has a bajillion GB of data on them. it taking 25 hours to copy to the drive vs. 3 is a pretty big difference to me.

i suppose if you are picking and choosing only the important stuff to BU it might be less a difference... but then if you are doing a bunch of manual work anyway you might as well do it to a USB2/FW drive and save a ton of time in transfer speed and use that saved time to move the drive somewhere safe in real life.

i get pissed when my gigabit NAS drops to 15-20MB/s from 45-50MB/s.

x23

@flyboy: OH OH OH, my avatar... sheesh, sorry. I've used it for years and years don't even remember where i found it.

shamoononon

@shamoononon: yeah

exploding ones filled with Propane.

Voted #4 funniest UK comedy TV moment - you're a star!

flyboy

@flyboy: Reminds you of blow up dolls? lol

shamoononon

@workingonyourinvoice:yeah looking at it now i see what u mean

flyboy

@flyboy: shamoononon is pissed because you just threw them into a wiki-abyss.

workingonyourinvoice

@shamoononon: actually I really wasn't being nasty at all - the image does remind me of that epidode and its up on the BBC site - not that NSFW....?

flyboy

@flyboy: Alright ya jerk, I'm at work here. Payback is a bitch.

shamoononon

@shamoononon: @workingonyourinvoice:

this is better idea of UXD.

[www.bbc.co.uk]

flyboy

@N@tedog: What, are you going to run to the bank pick up your hard drive backup the data and run back again? Now you have to calculate in for the gas money.

shamoononon

@workingonyourinvoice:it is a worrying image like out of Danger UXD

[en.wikipedia.org]

flyboy

@N@tedog: is it in a metal ferrous container?

flyboy

@shamoononon: Your avatar is going to keep me up tonight.

Backing up to a hard drive is sooo 2006. I keep my data engraved on aluminum slabs buried in a nuclear fallout shelter.

workingonyourinvoice

@shamoononon:

?? An external HDD is no bigger than a book. Drawer SDB runs me $100 a year at Chase. Its actually a really good alternative and relatively cheap.

N@tedog

Most likely they'll upload bits at a time.
Probably like 100MB every time.
Or maybe it'll use your realtime upload speed instead of the slower speed that your ISP gives you.
But jeah i think this is smart tho. i'd do it if i needed this.
Till then i'd rather buy a western digital ext. hdd and back up every day.

SneakerFiend

@N@tedog: Yea, well I'd like to see the size of the safe deposit box you have to rent to keep up with all the backups. They're not all that cheap either.

shamoononon

@Hvedhrungr: The point is, a lot of people don't have University servers and second homes to store their data in. This way you can back everything up, store it in two location, AND have somebody else responsible for ensuring all the data is being properly backed up and stored safe.

shamoononon

Datto's actually pretty popular. I'd have to go with Rocket-POD myself, love their build quality.

MagnoliaBoy

I have 1,500 GB of off site storage for $7/month from bluehost. It also comes with a free domain name!

dwight-schrute

@discounteggroll: Maybe the "enhanced" part refers to the little icons next to the LEDs?

Hvedhrungr

Once a month or once every six months backup your important goods to an external HDD and go put it in a safety deposit box at your bank. Save yourself the $700.

N@tedog

@shamoononon: Call me paranoid, but I back up my data to two different locations, for a total of three copies of each (important) file.
If I used (and trusted) the university's servers, I could run two more (free) off-site backups.
And even if I didn't have that last, free, option, there are services with "unlimited volume" off-site backups for less than half the monthly fee.

The fact of the matter is, you should be backing up your data. Time Machine is a step in the right direction, but I wouldn't want to depend on it alone.
If you run a business, backups are vital. The featured gizmo is not.

Hvedhrungr

@discounteggroll: I think the 500 billion bytes label is an aftermarket add on, but the enhanced display, well.... It's certainly enhanced when compared to a simple power light.

workingonyourinvoice

@discounteggroll: I assumed because it said "datamodo" that the picture wasn't exactly untouched.

Darrone

it might just be me, but I wouldn't put much faith in a company that measures the size of their backup drives in bytes and labels the LED-backlit power and Read/Write status as an "enhanced display"

discounteggroll

@Hvedhrungr: I don't know, the extra backup could be a business saver.

shamoononon

Actually, that is a awesome deal. I just wonder how secure they keep the back up data. (secure as in not hackable)

shamoononon

25 bucks a month is a whopper. If they shaved that off by about half, it might be something to talk about, but still on the expensive side. The drive itself isn't anything to brag about, either. $600 for 500GB is so far from competitively priced, I half expected it to sport two miniature handles at the top and the bottom to make it look even more like a tiny Mac Pro.
So it has a NAS enclosure. That's not enough to warrant a 200% price increase.

Hvedhrungr