Online Backup Tools

In response to consumer demand for an off-site method for backing up important files, there are now a lot of online backup services out there. The competition in the market means that it’s become more and more difficult for these services to stand out and differentiate themselves from the crowd. SafeCopy Backup (www.safecopybackup.com) looks to set itself apart through an intensive focus on both usability and reliability. Do SafeCopy’s features make it a compelling service for consumers?

The Basics

The SafeCopy service is available for the Windows and Mac platforms, as well as certain internet-capable smartphones including the iPhone. SafeCopy offers two basic services, one with a 150 GB storage limit, and one with a limit of 250 GB. The 150 GB plan is $50.00 US for one year, while the 250 GB plan is $75.00 per year. There are discounts available for customers who choose to subscribe for more than one year at a time. SafeCopy also offers an optional telephone setup assistance plan for a fee of $30.

Unlike many of its competitors, SafeCopy doesn’t offer unlimited storage. Instead, they emphasize the safety of your data and the reliability of their systems, including fault-tolerant design that purports to prevent transmission errors or corruption of files. They also advertise a proprietary TurboUpload feature that eliminates the unnecessary duplication of backups that can occur with other services.

The Pros

The major advantage that SafeCopy has over its competitors is value. At $50 per year, the 150 GB version of SafeCopy is less expensive than Carbonite ($55/year) and Mozy ($4.95/month). At the same time, SafeCopy allows you to back up files from an unlimited number of sources with a single account. Many of its competitors, including the aforementioned ones, charge on a per machine basis, meaning that you’ll have to pay extra to upload files from additional sources. This means that, if you’re looking to back up files from multiple devices or computers, you’ll save a significant amount of money with SafeCopy, provided you can deal with the 150 (or 250) GB limit.

In terms of performance, SafeCopy is very strong. The client is smooth and relatively unobtrusive. Automatic backups with SafeCopy are relatively simple, and won’t interfere with the performance of your computer. This is partly due to the TurboUpload feature, which eliminates unnecessary activity on SafeCopy’s part.

The Cons

Overall, SafeCopy is a strong online backup service. However, that’s not to say that it’s perfect, as there is one major area in which the service can be improved: SafeCopy’s main weakness is upload speed, which seems to be a bit on the slow side compared to some other services. That being said, it’s not the slowest one out there, either.

The Verdict

SafeCopy is a competent, reliable online backup service. Ultimately, whether SafeCopy would be a good bet for your purposes really depends on the amount of storage you require. If you have less than 150 GB worth of data you need to back up, then SafeCopy is highly recommended. This is especially true if you’re looking to back up files from multiple computers or devices; in these cases, even the slightly more expensive 250 GB plan can be much more affordable than those offered by SafeCopy’s competitors.

SpiderOak (spideroak.com) has quickly carved out a place as one of the most innovative online backup services, with a focus on providing a centralized storage location at which users or groups of users can consolidate files from multiple devices.  SpiderOak also advertises a proprietary fault-tolerant system that prevents any type of file corruption or transfer error.

The Basics

SpiderOak works with Windows, Mac, or Linux systems, offering essentially the same features for each platform, which can’t be said about some other online backup services.  It’s also one of relatively few of these providers to support Linux files.

Unlike other online backup services, SpiderOak doesn’t offer tailored plans for individuals or businesses.  Instead, SpiderOak is available at a standard rate of $10 per month per increments of 100 GB.  SpiderOak also offers 2 GB of free storage space, so you can use this as a way to test the service out if you’re interested.

The Pros

SpiderOak is perhaps the most fully-featured of all current online backup services.  While other services such as Mozy and ElephantDrive typically offer a basic service package at about $5 a month, SpiderOak seems to be positioning itself as the high-end service.  They charge more, but they offer more in the way of unique features.  One of the most important of these is the ability to back up files from an unlimited number of sources with a single account.  This means that you can back up files from multiple computers, USB drives, network drives, or external hard drives in a single, centralized location, whereas other online backup providers require you to pay extra fees for each additional device.

The smooth user interface of the SpiderOak client is an improvement over the clunky software that accompanies some of the other online backup packages.  SpiderOak also allows you to save an unlimited number of versions of the same file, which are date-stamped for your reference, and it has a “Recycle Bin”-type features to guard against accidental deletion of files.

SpiderOak also boasts a “zero-knowledge privacy policy.”  This means that no SpiderOak employee has access to your encryption information.  Theoretically, this makes it impossible for anyone other than you to access your files.  The actual encryption used by SpiderOak isn’t technically all that different from what other online backup providers use, but the zero-knowledge policy is an important difference.  On the other hand, a sceptic could point out that there isn’t really any proof that this is actually the case.

The Cons

The main drawback to SpiderOak is its cost, which can add up quickly if you need to back up large amounts of data.  Some of the competing online backup services offer unlimited storage, which makes SpiderOak’s limitations in this respect seem even more unfortunate.  Also, SpiderOak’s client doesn’t automatically upload hidden application data such as Outlook files or certain browser settings, among other things.  In order to back up these files, you have to know exactly where they are, whereas other online backup clients are designed to find these types of files on their own.

The Verdict

Whether SpiderOak is the right online backup service for you or not depends largely on the extent to which its extra features appeal to you.  For users who would like to be able to upload data from multiple devices, SpiderOak is an especially good option.  In these cases, SpiderOak can actually be more affordable, as other providers like Mozy will charge you extra to upload from additional devices.  For users who are primarily interested in backing up large amounts of data, Carbonite may be a more appropriate choice.

Mozy (mozy.com), a subsidiary of EMC Corporation, is one of the major players and best-known names among online backup services.  Based in Seattle, Mozy boasts a global clientele including more than one million individual users, 50,000 business customers, and total data holdings of over 25 petabytes.

The Basics

Mozy is available for Windows or Mac platforms.  With Mozy, you have the option of choosing between two services: MozyHome and MozyPro.  MozyHome is the individual service, priced at $4.95 per computer per month, while MozyPro is geared towards businesses.

In addition to the standard online file restoration service, Mozy offers a unique physical media restore service.  If you need to restore your data, you can download it via the web or the Mozy client, or you can have your data mailed to you on DVD, although this service does require an additional fee.  Some users actually report receiving their data on external hard drives rather than DVDs, although Mozy doesn’t advertise this perk.

The Pros

For starters, Mozy in addition to unlimited backup space, Mozy offers a standard 30-day file restore feature, so that files that have been backed up can be restored to previous versions in case of accidental or unwanted alterations for up to 30 days.  You have the choice of backing up your files on an automated and/or scheduled basis.  With Mozy’s automated backup feature, your files will be updated when your computer isn’t in use, and you have the further option of using bandwidth throttling to control how much bandwidth Mozy is allowed to use at any given time.

Another unique thing about Mozy in relation to other online backup services is the strong financial backing it claims.  Mozy is owned by the information management heavyweight EMC, and it uses this as proof that, unlike some online backup providers that have gone belly-up in the past, taking their clients’ data with them, Mozy should be around for the long haul.  Of course, whether this claim holds up or not remains to be seen, but it is worth taking into consideration.

The Cons

There are some common complaints about Mozy.  In terms of encryption, Mozy uses more-than-adequate 448-bit Blowfish encryption.  However, Mozy’s encryption process is frequently criticized because, in order to use it, you’re essentially required to put your encryption entirely in Mozy’s hands.  In a manner of speaking, you’re not the one encrypting your data – Mozy is.  For some users, this simply isn’t secure enough, and the company has been slow to adequately address this problem.

Even if you’re restoring files via the web or the Mozy client, you have to request ahead of time to retrieve your files, and there can be upwards of 15 minutes of waiting involved, which is much longer than it takes to access your files with other online backup services.  This limits Mozy’s usefulness in terms of sharing, as well.

The Mozy client’s interface is also somewhat clunky and unintuitive, particularly the Mac version.  This is unfortunate because such an important process as backing up your data ought to be made as easy and user-friendly as possible.  It can be a bit of a chore to manage your files effectively.

The Verdict

Although Mozy offers some very useful and unique features, particularly the physical restore feature, its all-too-evident problems hold it back from being a great online backup service.  For casual users who aren’t all that concerned about the aforementioned privacy issues, Mozy can certainly get the job done.  Also, Mozy does offer 2 GB of free backup space, which you can use as a trial to get a feel for the service.

Most local backup regimes are semi-automated but still rely on somebody to change the backup medium (tape or disk) and take it offsite. Online backup services are therefore increasingly seen as an attractive and fully automated alternative.

The big names include Carbonite, iDrive and Mozy. All tend to place the emphasis on individuals and small businesses. They offer broadly similar propositions of online backup and retrieval benefiting from encrypted data transfer. The services rely on an initial upload of a full copy of the data; thereafter the software looks for differences between the files on the backup and the files on your own machine and transfers only the changed data.

The amount of historical data kept varies between the different services. Carbonite, iDrive and Mozy all support both Windows and Apple operating systems, but differences in the software can mean that the terms of service are slightly different for the different products. There are significant differences in the pricing models.

Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) charges $54.95 per year for unlimited backup capacity. While predominantly marketed at individual workstations, its online forums suggest it works on servers too. The difficulty in using this budget account on a 500GB server seems to be that it has a fair-usage policy, which I suspect might lead to your account being terminated before you had completed uploading the initial data.

iDrive Pro (www.idrive.com) charges $49.95 a month for a 500GB account. Windows users benefit from a historical record of the last 30 versions of a file, while Apple users get 10 days’ worth.

MozyPro (http://mozy.com) is reassuringly marketed for use with servers, but costs $256.95 per month for a 500GB capacity server. Mozy also states that backup is still possible when files are open or locked, which can be a critical feature.

Explosion of data

The problem for architects with all these online services is that even small practices tend to have quite large servers. While cad and Microsoft Office documents have got a little more bloated in size over the years, it is the explosion of digital photographs, Photoshop and desktop publishing files that has fuelled huge growth in data. The emphasis on individual users and relatively small businesses is no accident. The time taken to upload the initial information set becomes a significant limitation on the practicality of the service.

One solution is to look for UK-based providers which may be able to offer negotiable fees for large data sets and the facility to collect the initial copy of the data by hard disk, to be uploaded to their servers.

When considering online backup, look carefully at the small print — online backup services all spell out limitations in liability. An online backup is potentially a great addition to your arsenal, but I would recommend that it is augmented by a thorough locally executed backup. The era of remembering to change backup media and taking it offsite is not going to end quite yet.

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