The cloud seems to be in the media for the very wrong reasons of late. Or maybe they are the right reasons because one of the things that the cloud or shared services does, is share the good and the bad with everyone (literally).
I mean, if your local server goes and you revert to backup or revert to nothing at all, then the only people to suffer are your staff. They will probably get a few hours extra lunch or longer depending on the severity.
However, when Google loses Gmail data, everyone knows and lots of people are affected. This isn’t good for anyone but it does point to the reality of the cloud and relying upon it for everything you do.
All this recent media attention over the past weeks has shown me personally is that you can’t rely on any one source of data storage. Take Gmail email for example. I use it extensively and until last year I had never thought to back it up locally. I had never had reason to.
But in looking for article to cover in this blog, it occurred to me that millions of people trust their email to Google and millions have no real control over it should Google purposely or accidentally delete it. So I started to look up ways that it could be backed up and now I have a local version of Gmail that I can sync with my online version.
You see the reverse is also just as dangerous. If you use a local version of Outlook and your PC goes, so does your email. No one will complain to Microsoft (well they might bag Vista or XP). Should you also keep an offline copy of the .PST file, your data is safe. To me the risk is the same.
The lesson in all of this is that not keeping both a local and offline/online version of your critical personal or business files can be fatal. It has nothing to do with the cloud being safe or not. Things do go wrong, servers do fail, backup servers can also fail, local PCs crash, they melt in a fire and are damaged beyond repair when contaminated by water. These disasters happen to home PCs, to small business systems and even those used by large corporate.
What it doesn’t mean is that can’t trust anyone with your data. All you need to do is share it around (in a secure way of course). That is what big businesses do. They have local and offsite backup. They have disaster plans. Plans that enable them to continue operating their business even should their premises be damaged beyond repair.
Gmail’s failings couldn’t have come at a worse time for Google and several of its partners who are in the midst of launching Google Apps services in Australia. Backup will be the first thing executives will ask for before they even see the services they have to offer. They will want to be reassured that this new cloud solution is less risky when compared to what they have in place at the moment.
These are I suppose defining moments for cloud services in Australia. To date we have heard so much about what will come but have not really seen a lot. Now just when we start to see some real evidence of services, cracks start to appear that will push the acceptance of these services further back.
We regularly talk about cloud computing on this blog and for most when they hear the word cloud computing they think of big companies hosting all of their servers and data remotely in the cloud. Whilst this is true its not really as complicated as that. Cloud computing is really simple and the beauty of it is that you probably have been using cloud computing for years and don’t realise it.
Did you ever consider where your GMail or Hot-mail account lives and where all of your emails and pics etc are stored for you? Its all cloud computing and if you consider how popular services such as GMail and Hot-mail are, you will probably also realise that they are some of the biggest cloud services in the world. Plus they are also free (mostly).
I personally have been using GMail for a few years now. Previous to this I used (and still do) a local Outlook installation that is linked with my Optus email. These emails arrive and are viewed using Outlook. The data is stored locally and backed up locally (using Carbonite of course)
Now ever since I started using Gmail and started to receive and send important information via it, I have been keen to learn how this would be backed up. Not that its likely that Gmail will fail, however, something could happen at some stage and should my files get lost, I wouldn’t be happy. Its not to say that I don’t trust Google. Its more that once you begin to understand the importance of being backed up, why would you wish to leave your email out of the picture. Doesn’t make sense.
Here are a few more reasons:
If your main Gmail account gets hacked, you will still have access to all your previous emails.
If you delete an important email from your Gmail Inbox by mistake, you can easily retrieve it from the online backup.
If the Gmail service goes down, you will still be able to read your older emails. Gmail outage won’t affect work.
So, I started to look around at how I could backup my Gmail account and this is what I found.
What I found was that Gmail allows you to make a local version of your Gmail account. This can then be synchronised with your online version enabling you to work offline should you need it. To start this simply login into your Gmail account and select Settings > Offline.
Select - Synchronise your mail to this computer so you can access it without an Internet Connection. This will then request to download Google Gears to your PC and then begin downloading your emails and contacts etc.
Once its done and you allowed it to create a shortcut on your desktop, you should be able to access your Gmail offline. The questions is how do you then back this up. The location of these files depends on the browser you are using. This is where this data lives. I suggest you simply find the files and right click on them to back them up with Carbonite.
The operating system and the browser you’re using determine the location of your data. Below is a list of these locations:
Internet Explorer: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\LocalLow\Google\Google Gears for Internet Explorer
Firefox: Database files are stored in the user profile directory. C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{PROFILE}.default\Google Gears for Firefox
Google Chrome: Database files are stored in the user profile directory. C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data\Google Gears
Internet Explorer: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Gears for Internet Explorer
Firefox: Database files are stored in the user profile directory. C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{PROFILE}.default\Google Gears for Firefox
Google Chrome: Database files are stored in the user profile directory. C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data\Google Gears
Firefox: Database files are stored in the user profile directory. Users/<user>/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/{PROFILE}.default/Google Gears for Firefox
Safari: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Google Gears for Safari
Linux Firefox: Database files are stored in the user home directory. <user>/.mozilla/firefox/{PROFILE}.default/Google Gears for Firefox
Microsoft Windows Mobile Internet Explorer: Database files are stored in the Application Data directory. \Application Data\Google\Google Gears for Internet Explorer
There is another way to backup your Gmail rather than using an offline mode of Gmail. What you can do is direct your email into a locally installed email tool such as Outlook or Thunderbird. Using POP3, you can allow GMail to feed your email client directly with each email allowing you to view them via the email client. Now I would be lying if I said it was easy. I personally found an offline version of Gmail easier to complete.
However if you are somewhat computer literate its probably worth a try. To enable POP in Gmail simply follow these instructions. Once you have completed this step, the next stage is to set your Outlook to receive the emails. Instructions for this stage can be found here. Gmail also advises that you make sure that you have all of the relevant Microsoft updates to do this. You can find these instructions here.
If Outlook isn’t your preferred email client, then you can find out how to complete this step using a variety of email clients here.
And finally, if all of this seems to be far too complex, there are actually online services that you can access that will do a backup of Gmail for you automatically. Two I was referred to by @mrjamesmoore are: http://www.backupify.com/ and http://blog.soocial.com
I also found another in http://www.gmail-backup.com/ I can’t say I have tried any of these personally, but they might also be worth trialling.
