171 Online File Storage Services

I have written several times about the need for making backup files. Probably the safest method of making backing files is to use one of the online file storage services. Not only do these services provide backup copies, they also store them off-site. Off-site storage can be a critical factor when it comes to storing your most important information. Just ask anyone who lost a home in Hurricane Katrina, in one of the western forest fires, or in a tornado. Everyone should have their genealogy data as well as their old family photographs, checkbook data, income tax information, email messages, and many other items stored in a distant digital repository for safekeeping.

My current favorite backup service for Windows XP users is Mozy at www.Mozy.com. For Macintosh systems, I'd suggest BackJack at www.backjack.com. In times past, I have also written about Xdrive, IBackup, and others. Now Listable.com has a list of 171 (count 'em!) online file storage services, and that number is growing. It may be more than 171 by the time you read these words. I suspect you can find a suitable backup service somewhere in that list!

To be sure, the list of online file storage services at Listable.com does not contain full reviews of each service. It is simply a list with a one- or two-sentence description of each. It lists free and for-pay services alike, as well as those for Macintosh and Windows and those that serve all operating systems.

You can find the extensive list of online file storage services at http://www.listible.com/list/online-file-storage.

Now, go back up your most important files, OK?

Comments

[Jasia]

Not so fast...

Before you start comparison shopping various online storage companies be sure and check out each company's financial stability. Anyone can put up a web site. Price shopping for online storage isn't as important as checking to see if a company is on sound financial footing. You don't want to go through all the work to price shop, learn a company's set up for uploading, and plunk down your money until you know if the company is likely to be around next year, or the year after. Start-up companies go belly up all the time. Look at any of these company's web sites and see if you can tell if they are a start up or have been around for several years. Backing up your data is important, but choosing a company that's likely to be around in the foreseeable future is just as important. Do your homework!

[Jennifer]

For online backup news, information and articles, there is an excellent website:

http://www.BackupReview.info

This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.

Cheers,

[Carol Genung]

If online backup file storage services aren't what you want, you can always back up your files on CD or DVD. I keep a backup copy at home, work, and with my sister, who lives out of state. That way, I have additional backups in case of disasters or CD failures.

[Claire Bettag]

For people with .mac accounts, is there a benefit to using www.backjack instead of using the Apple backup program and backing up to the .mac account?
Claire

[Doris Wheeler]

Dick, Mozy will give you free storage if you "refer" me to them and I sign up. Care to do that?
Doris

[Dick Eastman]

Thank you for the kind offer, Doris. Actually, if you click on the link in the above article, I will get credit it for it. That takes you to http://mozy.com/?kbid=7017 which is a referral link.

- Dick Eastman

[Pierce Reid]

One thing to keep in mind if you are sending personal information off to a commercial site: the US Patriot Act gives authorities have the power to get copies of any computer data that is stored on an American company's computer system, and the company who gives them that information can be forbidden from disclosing that they passed on your information. They might even be able to get information stored in another country by a subsidiary of an American firm.

There may not be much choice for Americans, but other countries have laws forbidding the disclosure of private information stored on any company's computers. That can put some companies in a legal bind and is encouraging other, non-American, companies not to do certain types of computerized applications on computers that may be subject to the Patriot Act.

A solution might be to encrypt your data before backing it up on someone's web site. That adds an extra step to the backup process and you have to be sure you (or your heirs) can recover the decryption key when needed.

Pierce Reid

[Dick Eastman]

The suggestion for encryption is an excellent one. Many of the companies on the list do use software that encrypts the data in your system before it is sent to the companies' servers. In those cases, the employees of the company cannot read your data. Companies such as Iron Mountain, connected.com, Backjack, Mozy, JungleDisk and probably some others all encrypt your data before it is sent across the Internet. However, not all companies do that.

- Dick Eastman

[Carol McGrath]

Pierce Reid wrote:
'A solution might be to encrypt your data before backing it up on someone's web site. That adds an extra step to the backup process and you have to be sure you (or your heirs) can recover the decryption key when needed.'

If your data is encrypted on your computer BEFORE it's backed up on a web site, how do you decrypt it or use a decryption key, that I assume is also on your computer, if you have a total 'meltdown' of your computer. The online company can't read it or decrypt it because the key is on your hard drive, right? You can't get to your information anyway, can you? It seems to me copying to a CD or other on-site media and keeping a copy off-site would be more dependable. Or am I missing something here?

[Dick Eastman]

Decrypting the file is easy. On the service that I use, the encryption key is entered by the human. It can be any string of letters and numbers you wish: the city where you were born, the names of your children, your mother's maiden name, anything that you can remember.

As long as you stay on the same computer, the encryption and decryption is automatic. If you move to a different computer and want to restore the data there, you will have to remember that encryption key and enter it there. Of course, the same is true for any password-protected software or web site. The encrypted backup software is no different than thousands of other applications in that regard.

I use a string of letters that means something to me but would be meaningless to anyone else. For instance, you might use the first letters of each word in a sentence. Here is an example:

iwbisatos3

That uses the first letters of "I was born in San Antonia, Texas on September 3rd." Such strings of letters are very secure and also very easy to remember.

- Dick Eastman

[Larry Van Horn]

Dick says, "Probably the safest method of making backing files is to use one of the online file storage services."

Sorry Dick, I have to disagree with you on this one. I have as safe of storage as you can get and I don't have to deal with all the loops and hoops you have laid forth in your article.

In addition to a current backup of my project on my jump drive that I keep close by, I also have my DVD/CD backups of pictures and my TMG genealogy database in my safe deposit box at my bank. That safe deposit box is free and is included as part of my account with them, and is a very secure location (plus it ss offsite). It doesn't get any easier than that and the cost is just right -- free!!!

I also send copies of these DVD/CDs offsite to other members of my family who do not live in the same area is I do. This is much more safer and economical than what you outlined in your article above.

[Zane Healy]

I for one don't want a backup of my personal data from one of my computers stored on someone elses servers. However, I do have a couple thoughts on the subject on making it safer.

The recommendation to encrypt your data yourself, on your own system prior to backing it up to the remote server is excellent. Use someone elses product, and you make it harder for the service to access your data. Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the encryption software make sure you can decrypt the data. Then backup the data, and restore it and make sure you can still decrypt it and access your data. You don't want to discover there is something wrong with your backup process after you need the backup!

Read the terms of the service agreement very carefully. What is this company allowed to do with your data, and who will they turn it over to? Now for a scary thought, what happens to your data if the company is sold? Another disturbing thought is how do they dispose of any hard drives or tapes that they use to backup your data. Which in turn brings up the question of how do *they* backup your data, after all they also could have a catastrophic failure.

Personally I like the idea of backing ones data up to Hard Drives, CD/DVD, USB flash device, floppy, or tape and storing it in a secure location at a geographically different location. Personally I use a combination of Hard Drives, CD/DVD's, USB flash Devices and tapes, but then I have an unusual assortment of systems. I try to ensure that my USB flash Device has a current copy of a couple projects I'm working on, and that I have fairly current backups of everything else. My most important data is stored offsite in a couple different locations. By the way by hard drives I mean either the hard drive of another machine on your home network, a removable hard drive, or some sort of RAID setup. On a couple of my systems I periodically duplicate the system drive so that I can be up in a hurry if the drive dies (this happened on one during a recent power outage).

Oh, and it's probably a good idea to have a backup of your licenses for all your software. This should definitely be stored in an encrypted file.

Having said all of this, there is one serious advantage to having automated online backups. If you do, and your computer dies, you will hopefully at most loose a few hours worth of data. For those of us providing our own backup solutions, the odds are, we'll loose more, unless our own solution includes some sort of automated backup.

[Ted]

If you are really serious about storing all your important data in a trusted online storage service, and easily access them from anywhere, then you got to try IBackup (http://www.ibackup.com). IBackup is a secure online data storage, access and data sharing solution for consumers and businesses with several possible interfaces and options to store, retrieve and manipulate your data. All IBackup applications have 128-bit SSL encryption as default option. IBackup has browser based and downloadable applications for Windows, Linux/Unix and Mac platforms.

To get a feel of IBackup’s features, you can try their free trial before you take an account. IBackup is like an extra hard drive right on your computer and it allows you to store your important documents and files securely online. It also protects you from data loss caused by system crash, drive failures, virus attack and theft. You can store your files and retrieve them from any computer no matter where you are. You can even stream audio and video content instantaneously.

Backup and restore of files and folders are very fast with IBackup. IBackup does not consume much network bandwidth, because it transfers only portions a file that has been modified or changed. It also have a feature called snapshots, which allows the account holder to see the files stored in the IBackup account during the previous days. You can also restore files from this historical view of data. Supports Open file Backup for most common application data types, backup of critical system related components and Exchange Server databases and Mailboxes without interrupting the running MS Exchange Server services.

With Web-Manager it’s possible to create folders, upload, webload files, rename, delete and share files or folders with others for collaborative access. The `Private Share’ feature in Web-Manager allows an IBackup user to instantly share data with another IBackup user. You can also create sharable links and email them to your friends and partners. There is another option by which you can private share data instantly with another IBackup user.

[Jennifer]

I have used both Mozy and iBackup. I dropped the iBackup subscription. Mozy is cheaper, is easier to install and works better in automatic mode. I also found Mozy was easier to use when restoring files. iBackup could do the same but was somewhat more complex. Add in two gigabytes of free storage space and Mozy wins hands down.

[John]

I’ve tried IBackup (http://www.ibackup.com) and found it to be good. IBackup has a proven track record of delivering the best service among all the online backup and restore services.

IBackup's online backup services include applications for interactive and automatic scheduling of backups with compression and encryption during transmission, incremental/full backups, synchronization, advanced logging and reporting. You can also backup open files with IBackup. IBackup supports backups for UNIX and Linux based computers using rsync. IBackup accounts are compatible with most FTP clients on most platforms providing a powerful flexible tool to transfer files.

To make things easy for you IBackup have a cool application called IDrive. Using this, you can map the online account as a local drive on your computer and work on the documents or data as if they are on your PC. Installing and using it is very easy and it has 128-bit support. Backup your music or video files in your account and then hear or watch them with a media player with IDrive Multimedia and create playlists or fast forward songs.

With Web-Manager you can share these files by creating sharable links and emailing them to your buddies and partners. The `Private Share’ feature allows an IBackup account holder to instantly share portions of the account with another IBackup user. The shared data becomes immediately available to the shared user and it integrates seamlessly with the shared user’s account.