Anybody use an online backup service for

[Fluid Power]

OFFICE or WORK files? If so, pros/cons or any other advice?

Looking to back up my companies financial data offsite.

Thanks,

Darren

[Rhino]

I have used both carbonite and backblaze. Both services are extremely similar and offer competitive packages. One thing of note is that they all differ on what file types they allow. (Some don't allow music, iso images, executables, etc...) so insure all of your file types are supported before signing up.
They're both highly secure in transport and storage. For a small shop, or someone without a ton time/experience for checking regular backups I think this is a great solution. The only reason I decided to move off of a hosted service is that, even though I have nothing to hide, having my data "out there" somewhere, but not under my control eventually got to me. A few friends and I got together and ended up building a similar service to use ourselves.

Since this is company related; How critical is data secrecy to your company? Are you publicly traded or under any data related regulatory compliance?

[Fluid Power]

Thanks for the reply. No we are a small privately held company. Just changing around some servers and it was thrown out as an idea vs tape back up or remote hard drive. I tend to agree with you, not sure I want my stuff "out there"

Darren

[Rhino]

If it makes you feel any better, I've been told that extremely few people at either of the services have access to the files.

Personally, I can see using it for DR purposes, however I would avoid using it as a sole backup method. When a file is inadvertently modified, then the file systems synchronized, your only good copy just got updated inadvertently as well.

[Fluid Power]

Rhino, thanks for the advice. Do you 'do' computers for a living?

Darren

[Rhino]

You're welcome. Yea, I work IT in the banking industry.

[GregWeld]

Darren --

Depending on how much 'data' you want to store off site... maybe look into just doing a big digital HD 'remote' at your home or the home of a superior etc. Data can be encrypted so if something happened to the HD it couldn't be "readily" used.

[Fluid Power]

I really should start another post at this point and ask for help to build a small server. We have an HP unit now and we are adding Microsoft SQL and some accounting software. I need at least 4gb of memory, a second RAID compatible hard drive and either a tape drive or an external hard drive to back it up. (online might still be an option even with the external or tape drive)

It seems hard to find what I am looking for pre-built. I am little worried about picking components and dropping them in the shopping cart and assembling it myself.

I know just enough to cause myself serious issues!

Any advice anyone?

Thanks,

Darren

[monza]

We back up all our company files on a internal hard drive and a external hard drive that is 'offline' from every thing else except for when backing up. So always two copies of everything incase something fails. They are also at separate locations.
We had some computer geek build us our server and he set up the auto back ups. Hope maybe that helps?

My home stuff and lap tops back up automatically to a home hard drive, that was super easy to set up.

[GregWeld]

Remember this when 'backing up' - and especially automatic back ups.... let's say your normal HD or files get corrupted --- and all that corruption backs up to your backups....

Now all you have is a bunch of corrupted crappola....

So don't do AUTOMATIC back ups.... and make sure your data is "Good" after any upgrade etc - BEFORE you send it out to your backup drives!

So many folks end up with giant messes.... when they "thought" they were doing good.

[monza]

Back up a bit. The autoback ups don't write over the previous back ups for some period of time (months), so you can revert back to the non corrupted crappola... but then I don't really care I'm selling snowboards not saving the world.;)

I do dump photos and stuff (not porn, family photos) to another HD manually that is separate and not automatic.

[GregWeld]

Just sayin' ! It can be a nasty azz surprise if you don't think thru the details... like most things... armed with the right info can help.

T-Mobile (local company here) found out what happens when your back up gets the same corrupted crap that the "upgrade" to their system got.... :woot:

[carbuff]

I haven't used it for any business purposes, but I do use the Mozy home offsite backup, and it seems to work pretty well.

http://mozy.com/

Thankfully I haven't needed to restore from an online backup, but I have replaced my computer, and migrating from one to the other wasn't too bad. I use it primarily for personal financial files and documents that I care about. The free home service is only 2 or 4GB... They do have a more business oriented service as well.

[Fluid Power]

Thanks guys. We back up one server nightly to tape, change the tape everyday, and only have a week on hand at a time. This system is Unix based and not connected to the internet so there has not been any drama. The new accounting system is Windows based (dear God!) and is running on its own server. I was going to back this up to a tape drive or an external hard drive and follow the same practice as the tape. Back up nightly, over write weekly. We are not storing drawings or engineering data or something that might need to be recovered for a customer at a much later date. I just thought an online option might work. I guess the traditional route looks pretty good at this point.

Darren