Archive for the ‘online backup’ Category
My approach to marketing any product or service I have ever worked with is to be frank about it. It probably doesn’t please everybody and paints me slightly negative but people have so many avenues to research products that simply ignoring that your product has weaknesses is in my way of thinking a flawed strategy. So in saying all of this, I wanted to list some of the key disadvantages of using online backup.
Speed
Many people complain that it takes far too long to backup your drive using online backup. I would have to agree that in Australia the upload speeds are relatively slow and particularly slow if you have cheap ISP plan or are backing up during peak times of the day. Carbonite states that you can backup up to 3GB per day. So if you had 30 gig which is about the average, it would take you a minimum 10 days. Now let me say that I have seen some people surpass 3GB per day but most don’t. Most do about half and so 30GB would normally take 20 days.
Is there anything you can do to speed the backup process. There are a couple of things. First is to leave your PC running over night so that Carbonite has as much opportunity as possible to complete its work. The second thing is to review the internet plan you are on and see if you can upgrade for a month whilst your backup is in progress.
The 3rd thing you can do is stagger the backup over a few months.
The beauty of Carbonite is that after the initial backup is done, the rest of the backups are incremental. So they should be pretty much instantaneous.
Yes hard drives are much faster than online backup because there is no internet to travel across. The data simply travels across the wire connecting your PC and the hard drive. In most cases, 30 minutes is all it takes to backup 30 GBs.
Restoring
The next disadvantage is restoring speeds. This issue is also linked to the first one. I was reading through a small business forum I regularly visit yesterday, and read a post by a PC repair person spelling out that downloading 100GB via an online backup service could take a very long time. He was right it certainly wouldn’t be done in a day. Carbonite downloads at about 10- 15 GB per day. Your download speeds are also much faster than your upload speeds which makes it much faster than uploading.
Again compared to having an external hard drive sitting next to your PC that you can simply plug in and transfer the files, online backup is slower. Internet speeds in Australia are going to get faster, whether the NBN hits your home or not in the not too distant future. Both ISPs and Carbonite are always looking at ways to improve the experience of their services.
The best way to manage the download process is to prioritise your restore focusing firstly on the files you need NOW. Obviously you are not going to need all of the 100GB right there and then. Carbonite lets you prioritise your restore using its smart restore wizard.
If you are organised enough to use more than one form of backup eg hard drive and online backup, then you can use your hard to restore your data. Your online backup can then be used as a fall back should your drive fail (and trust me they do).
Data Centres are Overseas
Carbonite’s data centres are in the US. Best to be upfront with that. How does this disadvantage you? If you need to visit the data centre, bringing in a spare drive that you wanted to dump the data onto, you can’t do this. Even if Carbonite offered this service, the time that it would take for you to send the drive to the US and to retrieve it wouldn’t be worth it.
Some people say that upload speeds would be faster if the data centre was local. I am probably not technical enough to know the answer to this one. Certainly it would cost your ISP a lot less to send and access this data for you if the centre was local, but this doesn’t impact you.
Honestly unless you have some legal reasons that require the data to store locally, then whether it is overseas or not shouldn’t really matter. With so much more going into the cloud these day, you will get used to the fact that some services are going to be sitting on your PC nor on your desk.
In terms of safety, the bigger and more successful the company the better and more secure you are. More resources means greater controls and processes to protect your data. It also means more hands on deck should you need assistance. Overseas online backup services offer this, but so do local ones. Do your research.
In terms of price, economies of scale play a big role with the price of online backup services. Its not simply you get what you pay for, ie because its cheap its lesser quality. Services out of the US are cheaper simply because there are just so many more people that will access the program from there. Local Australian online backup services simply don’t have the opportunity to get scale. The only companies in my mind that can do this are someone like Telstra or Optus with their millions of customers. Given their record for over pricing services, you are not likely to ever online backup of your entire PC for $72 pa.
Bandwidth Surcharges
When I first started at Carbonite I heard a lot about this. People being stung during the initial upload service because they have uploaded more than their allocated bandwidth for the month. Yes this can happen but I can honestly say that I had probably 2 customers in over 2 years that had to pay their ISP additional fees.
Internet plans are always improving in Australia, you only need to look at the introduction of unlimited plans over the past 6 months to see this. So your options here are to upgrade to a plan that gives you more bandwidth at least for the month you are uploading your initial backup or to stagger the backup over a few months, starting with your most important files first.
External Drives
Why doesn’t Carbonite also backup external drives? The simply answer is that Carbonite’s pricing is based on the average size of your internal hard drive and the average amount of data a PC stores on it. Most online backup services work the same way. If we were going to also allow for external drives then the pricing would need to be adjusted accordingly.
For customers who need to have an external drive backed up, we now have CarbonitePro. It does local, external and even network drives.
A new service that I saw one of our competitors release recently, was the ability to have your online backup service instruct your PC to also backup to a local (internal/external drive). This concept sounds appealing to me, particularly for our more organised users.
If you are a small business, you should be backing up locally (external drive) as well as using online backup as a 2nd defence.
Set & Forget
How can there be a disadvantage with set and forget. This isn’t really a disadvantage with Carbonite nor online backup, its called becoming lazy. Technology breaks and in most occasions it may have nothing to do with the tool you are using. So the risk I see with installing Carbonite and simply saying “there its done, no more need to worry about backup again” is that if Carbonite should stop working for whatever reason, you will never know. Carbonite has flags to tell you it isn’t working but you should be checking anyway. Remember Carbonite is just a tool. Its your data, your business and your responsibility to stay on top of it.
So there you have it, the main disadvantages of online backup as I see them.
Picked up on the following article this morning:
Cablevision, a major broadband provider headquartered in New York, has launched television ads promoting an online backup service — powered by Carbonite. The move targets consumers rather than small business owners. But it’s safe to expect Cablevision to make SMB online backup moves. Here’s why.
Cablevision’s TV ads promote Optimum Online Backup, Powered by Carbonite. The service offers consumers 2GB of free online storage — or enough space to store about 400 songs or about 600 photos, according to Cablevision. But to qualify for the service you need to be a Cablevision Optimum Online broadband subscriber.
Meanwhile, Cablevision also promotes Optimum Lightpath, a business-centric effort that includes managed services, data, voice, video and Internet services. The Lightpath effort also includes business continuity and backup services.
Generally speaking, Cablevision frequently promotes Optimum Lightpath to larger businesses, colleges, universities and hospitals. But it’s safe to expect Cablevision to increasingly target SMBs. I wonder if Carbonite — or another third-party backup service — will play a role.
During my time at Carbonite I have tried to work with countless ISPs to get them to offer Carbonite and online backup to their customers but haven’t had any success. Unfortunately it all comes down to economics, they all have to make a pretty buck out of it (and we don’t have enough to share around).
What astounds me though is the lack of enthusiasm most ISPs have generally shown to services like online backup when in the US, I can point to several partnerships that Carbonite Inc have created, yet we are at Zero in Australia.
As I have mentioned on many occassions via this Blog, as well as through Twitter and many forums etc, the issue in Australia has to do with a lack of education. Everyday PC owners just don’t know enough about backing up their home PCs. Unless they have a techo at home, it just doesn’t happen.
I have generally also found many ISPs not overly interested in even offering anti-virus software. Reading the press this week, there were some recommendations going around that ISPs may be required to stop custmers from using the net when a virus is detected. The liklihood of attracting a virus is actually less than losing a file or all of your files, yet no one is talking about encouraging their customers to stay backed up.
To be honest, several of the ISPs eg Internode and iiNet did show interest but they just weren’t ready for it. It comes down to convincing the Product Managers and their executives that it makes sense to keep your customers secure from file loss. Happy customer is good for everyone I guess.
The results from the US are encouraging though, so I am sure ISPs will eventually embrace online backup in Australia as well.
Walk into any DickSmith or OfficeWorks and you will most probably see them stacked and ready to go, terabyte drives for under $150. Boy is that cheap. It certainly makes you think about buying one. You could store so many photos in it, videos etc, Great for backup?
But is it really? Yes its cheap, but does it make backing up more secure or easier. No it doesn’t. With growing families and less room for PCs these days, most people keep their hard drive in the desk draw (that is where mine is). And once an a while, they remember that they should backup the latest digital photos they downloaded onto the family PC. Unfortunately once and while, isn’t really good enough when you are talking about important information.
The difference between online backup and buying a terabyte drive, is that online backup will do it for you. There is no “remember to grab the drive, plugging it in, finding the files, dragging them across and then congratulating yourself that you finally got around the backing your PC up”. Carbonite simply does it all for you, every day. It’s automated and that is really what is so great about it.
Some of you might say that online backup can’t be used to backup a terabyte’s worth of data. How would you ever get it back if you had to download it, it would take months. They have a valid point. Carbonite, and online backup in general (at the consumer level anyway) wasn’t designed to backup anything and everything on your PC. Sure it can and will do that if you manage it that way, but for the everyday user, it should be used to provide secure backup of your most important files. Your most important pictures, documents, emails contacts, receipts and invoices etc. For many it will be their only form of backup, for others it will be a secondary source.
If you look at purely from a monetary sense, $150 for a terabyte is equivalent to a 2 year Carbonite subscription. But be sure to also factor in the effort that it has saved on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis when the manual backup is performed. What would you prefer to be doing late at night?
Computer repair businesses can provide you with great insight into how small businesses backup, or in this case how they don’t.
I received a call the order day from a potential reseller for Carbonite, who told me about the many cases he had come across lately where small businesses think they are backing up their critical files but in reality they aren’t.
What amazed me (and it probably shouldn’t have) is just how much risk some businesses are prepared to take on because they are ignorant of their computer needs.
In this one case, the reseller visited a news agency that kept their backup on disks. So the intention was there. The reseller decided to take a sample of CDs to see what was actually on them. He found that many of the disks where totally empty. So either the business owner didn’t backup properly, or with time, the quality of the CDs deteriorated and the data was lost.
In a 2nd example, the reseller visited another business which had a PC that was being backed up. The business owner in this case had 2 hard drives on the desktop. So even though the data was being backup should one hard disk fail, it wasn’t kept off site nor even in another room. So should the room burn or the PC have some terminal failure (eg power surge), the data wouldn’t be accessible.
Computers are complicated things and backing up even more complicated but a simple call to a PC shop will probably do for most small businesses.
The number of enquiries we receive on a weekly basis regarding online backup and remote backup solutions has escalated significantly. I am unsure if its because more people are looking at this type of solution or if our improved Google rankings mean more people are finding us.
So where to from here, at a time when businesses are starting to look more inwards rather than outwards, online and remote backup must be added to the short list of key projects for 2009.
Something like Carbonite is probably one of the cheapest pieces of software you will ever purchase but its worth thousands should that inevitable happen and your PC crash or you have some other disaster.
We obviously would like to see everyone with an online backup solution like Carbonite, but even if they simply use a hard drive that they take offsite each night.
Do the right thing by your business, please backup.
If backups are a headache for your IT manager, backing up data at remote offices can be a massive migraine. Most small/medium sized businesses will traditionally backup a remote office using tape or an external hard drive. This has a number of obvious drawbacks, not the least of which is reliability because of the need for human intervention.
To address the issue of the manual backups (tape or hard drive), many IT managers are looking for alternative solutions that are just as effective, less costly and less time consuming. With economic times being what they are, more and more articles are being written about offsite backup solutions, which shows that it is becoming more and more popular, particularly for small businesses.
Remote offices are generally characterised by relatively small amounts of data that have to be backed up, as well as a lack of IT savvy staff. They usually include a sales person(s) and back office staff. In an office with just 20 – 30 GB to back up, tape can be relatively expensive. Tape drives aren’t cheap, and tape loaders and libraries are even more expensive. The economics are seriously skewed.
Hard drives on the other hand are much cheaper and there is plenty of software around that can assist with both manual as well as automated backups. Terrabyte drives are relatively cheap these days. The problem with hard drives, even with a small amount of data is that you can never eliminate hardware failure as well as people not following proper processes.
But the biggest issue in a remote backup scenario using tape or hard drive, and the one most likely to affect your data protection, is that most remote offices don’t have staff who can maintain (and repair) the backup process. Backups are often handled by an administrative assistant or clerical person with little or no training in IT generally.
In most situations, a receptionist has to change tapes daily or check that the backup was complete. They mean well, but they’re busy and what happens when it doesn’t work. There have also been cases where someone has left the same tape in the drive all week and, in one case, an employee locked the tapes in a safe and lost the key.
Switching to another form of backup won’t magically produce someone with the training to run remote office backups. But most of the alternative technologies require much less manual intervention, and in some cases none at all.
One of the more intriguing backup alternatives for remote sites and smaller offices is offsite online backup.
Remote backup services such as Carbonite can be an ideal solution for that remote small office. Backups are automatic and happen offsite, ie they don’t require manual intervention from the receptionist or office manager. If a remote office has a relatively modest amount of data to back up, a service such as Carbonite may be a good fit. The office will however require a broadband connection and enough bandwidth to cover the initial and daily uploads. Given the low Gig amount being backed up, restores should also be relatively quick.
Some tips for online remote backups:
1. Check your bandwidth. You need to know how much data you expect to back up to a service such as Carbonite and if your current bandwidth is adequate not just to handle backups in a reasonable time, but for restores. Note that downloading data is several times quicker than uploading
2. Ensure reliability. Select a reputable service. Regular outages can cause you big problems. Also ensure that the service provider is profitable and stable. Carbonite has been operating as an offsite backup solution for mum and dad and small businesses for several years and now has over 600,000 customers worldwide.
3. Tally the costs. Online remote backup services vary in their pricing models. Some can cost you thousands a month. Carbonite offers single PC unlimited backup for $71.95 per annum.
4. Make sure your data is safe. Ask what measures the service provider takes to safeguard your data. Carbonite encrypts your data (twice) whilst it’s being transferred to our servers as well as whilst it’s being stored. We use the same encryption standards that banks use.
5. Stop and resume. Ensure your offsite backup service allows you to stop a backup in progress and then restart it from the point it was interrupted. Having to re-run an entire backup is costly and time consuming. Carbonite allows you to pause your backup and restart it as required.
6. Protect desktop and laptop data. Carbonite is an ideal service for backing laptops and people on the move regularly as it offers protection for the entire hard drive of the PC.
7. Continuous or scheduled backups. Carbonite offers ongoing automated backup that can be set to run constantly or as required by the user.
A major advantage of backing up using a remote offiste backup solution is that in most cases, you can recover to any computer. This is a new feature to Carbonite (only recently launched and not yet available to our Australian users (but coming soon)). Carbonite provides protection whist your are downloading by encrypting your data during the entire process.
Because most online remote backup services rely on the Internet to transfer data, there are some practical size limits on how much data you can effectively back up. The upload process and speed depends almost entirely on the bandwidth of your connection. The other determining factor is the size of the backup window. Most transmissions are generally small eg 20 – 30 GB which will as an initial backup usually take about 10 working days to complete. Subsequent backups are then only the changes that occur to files, so they take minutes not hours or days.
As many IT Managers start reviewing their budgets for the coming financial year, offsite backup solutions for remote offices will become an option they will consider this time round.
Even though I have spent my entire working life with a computer in front of me, I can’t really say that I am a very IT technical person. I see computers more as a tool that anything else. The truth however is that they play such a critical role in our day to day commerce and hold such critical data that they should be given a little more respect (by me anyway).
Over the Xmas break, I was thinking about what would be a backup routine that could be used by the everyday non computer literate person. I am sure there are lots of these articles out there, but the stats still show that most people have never or don’t regularly backup. I personally will really follow a routine that is simple and doesn’t compromise the million other things I have to do day to day.
When most people think backup, they think an external hard drive. I have a hard drive at home and I use it for all of the data on my laptop. In thinking about this backup strategy, I concluded that hard drives should form the primary role in your home backup strategy.
Hard drives don’t cost much these days. Dicksmith offers a 500GB Maxtor for under $100 (limited time). Once you have purchased the hard drive you need to take it out of its box and use it. Simply transfer all critical files and applications on to it. These include your PST file if you use Outlook (no need to backup emails if you use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo), all of your documents, downloads, pictures and videos.
If you are using Vista, you should also try using the Vista Backup and Restore Centre. You will find it under All Programs. This Vista service will enable you to create a complete working image of your PC (includes all of the software and the files on your PC). A 500 GB external drive will be more than enough for a 500GB internal hard drive as the backup will be compressed to make it smaller.
Creating a restore point is very important should your PC crash to the point of needing to reinstall all software from scratch, which can take hours.
You should try and do a backup of all your files to your hard drive at least monthly. Vista Backup and Restore Centre can also help you with this. I should be saying weekly if not daily, but I know that I personally have only used my hard drive several times in the past year and so I think monthly as more realistic.
Now, hard drives that are used on a monthly basis can provide you with backup for the core of your critical files. However for many of us that use our home PC’s for more than just reading emails and visiting websites, we really do something that is a little more immediate and most importantly automated. This is where your secondary backup process kicks in.
An online backup service such as Carbonite is ideal for this. Carbonite provides automatic backup. Once you install it and select the files that you want to backup, it will automatically back them up and any changes made to them from then on without you needing to lift a finger.
Online backup is ideal for email and folders/files that you are using on a daily basis. This is also particularly relevant for those using book keeping packages such as MYOB and Quicken at home. Carbonite can easily backup the database file that the application generates.
In addition to being automatic, Carbonite is also very affordable. At just $71.99 per year, it will allow you to backup as much as you want (yes unlimited backup). What is also an important feature, is because the backing up is done offsite (ie your data is transferred online to an offsite data centre in Boston, USA) should your PC get stolen, or there be a fire at home or in the office, the files stored with Carbonite can be accessed within minutes (depending on their size of course). Your external hard drive will most likely endure a similar fate to the computer.
To make the most of your investment with Carbonite, I would try and backup all of your data (even though you might not necessarily be using it for restoring). This will ensure that you have a full copy of everything both on a hard drive as well as online. It might take some time to complete that initial upload (I would also recommend staggering the files over a few months to ensure you don’t have any bandwidth issues) but it will be worth it. When it comes time to doing a restore, if the file is large and you need it urgently, then you can use the external hard drive to get it back right away (as long as it is still around). If you absolutely need the latest version, then you can restore it via Carbonite. Downloading is nearly twice as quick as uploading and small files are accessible in minutes.
So by investing in a hard drive to do a total backup of your entire system and all your files on a monthly basis, as well as an online backup solution such as Carbonite as a secondary but also more immediate solution, your home/office will be secure should that inevitable disaster occur.
The stories of PC disasters are endless and they continue to be heard even when we all know there are so many ways for people to backup these days. Unfortunately it seems it is still too hard for most to protect themselves.
Hackers, viruses, acts of nature — even a coffee cup is capable of destroying years of your precious data.Much of our life is stored in digital form on a computer so doesn’t it make sense that you’d do almost anything to keep that data safe. See original article
Even though this article is from the US, it’s just as relevant in Australia. The article encourages PC users to do something about backing up and goes on to compare both Carbonite Online Backup and Mozy.
This is what it said about ‘How to use Carbonite’. Carbonite puts a lot of focus on keeping its service simple, without the many frills you may get from other providers. At the end of the day, PC users just want it to happen and keep happening (backing up that is) and Carbonite does this well.
Using Carbonite Backup
The first step is downloading their free trial software. It takes all of about 30 seconds to download their 2.8 MB software on a high speed cable connection. The installation takes a few minutes longer, but it’s very informative. Offering audio guides through the entire process.
Depending on how you setup the Carbonite software will determine what files are backed up. As mentioned if the standard install is done then your MY DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS are backed up. You can also override this and choose to manually select which files and folders are backed up.
Adding files to the backup is simple, you simply right click on the file on your computer and select Carbonite -> Back this up. It couldn’t be any easier. Other programs I’ve used you need to fumble around with tree directory menus clicking this and that, but Carbonite backup really has simplified this step.
If you’re backing up several gigs of information you should be prepared for it taking some time to do. But this is primarily only for the first backup. Since Carbonite will only add modified or new files withing folders you have chosen to backup each time.
Backing up and Restoring Files
My initial backup went off without a hitch. It did take sometime, but I didn’t notice any major slow down in my PC while it was going. I haven’t had to do a full restore of all the files, but I have accessed and tested some of them. Everything went as easily as Carbonite’s website suggests it should.
Carbonites Backup Drive Screen
Carbonite Support
From all the consumer reviews I’ve read I’ve got to say that the Carbonite support team sounds like the best in the biz. They offer phone and online support, and those consumers that have called have actually got to speak with a real person. Fancy that, an actual support person in the age of computers.
Verdict on Carbonite Backup
As a backup tool Carbonite backup is at the top of my list. I am still using it to keep files and data safe. The only draw back is that to restore large amounts of data could take some time to download. I love the unlimited space option, also their desktop software is simple to use, and adding files to a backup is easy.
Compared to it’s competitors Carbonite is the sure winner. Download their free trial and you’ll see for yourself.
Carbonite Online Backup offers a free 30 day trial and you only need to provide an email address and a password.
Carbonite is an unlimited online backup service that currently costs AU$59.95 per year. For this yearly flat fee you can backup as much data as you like, securely, remotely and automatically.
How Carbonite Works:
How does carbonite backup your data securely, remotely and automatically? Here’s how:
- A small software application is installed on your computer that works in the background looking for new or changed files to back up. It’s integrated with your desktop. All you do is choose the folders you want kept backed up.
- Security is important. Your files are encrypted twice before they are sent off-site, using the same encryption techniques that banks use. Files remain encrypted at the Carbonite secure data centers, so only you can view them and retrieve them.
- Automation. Carbonite automatically backs up any new or changed files when you’re not using your computer. When you are using your computer, Carbonite hibernates so it won’t slow down your computer or internet connection.
- Restoring files is easy. If you accidentally delete or lose some of your files, a few clicks and you can retrieve them in no time. If your computer is damaged, stolen or destroyed and you lose all your data, you can easily restore them to a new computer.
You can start a free trial now: Australian customers can check out the Carbonite Australia website.
