Online, Inexpensive and Secure Data Storage?

ThePolkapunk asks: "After years of suffering through floppy demagnetizations, hard drive crashes, CDR bit rot and the click of death, I've become fed up with having to take care of my own backups. Does anyone know of a reasonably inexpensive, secure data storage facility accessible online that can store all of my important files with enough redundancy for me to feel safe?"

Comments

Gmail

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gmail.com/

USB/Firewire drives

[andrews]

I've recently switched from DLT to external USB drives. They're cheaper, more reliable and easier to restore from than tape.

Re:USB/Firewire drives

[gregmac]

I've recently switched from DLT to external USB drives. They're cheaper, more reliable and easier to restore from than tape.

I've been doing backups this way for a few months now. It's also easier to backup. Plug in the usb drive, run rsync, unplug and take offsite. I have a script I run in cron (or manually) that tries to mount it first, and only if it suceeds, runs rsync.

I've been meaning to install another drive at my house to backup a couple servers (just haven't gotten around to it yet), but that'll be similar.. rsync over ssl, run in cron every night.

The one thing this doesn't address that tapes usually do is keeping multiple backups. I was doing this for a while - where I had a directory for I think monday, wednesday and friday - but then our storage space increased and I couldn't fit this on my backup drive anymore. It would just be a matter of buying a bigger drive, or getting another couple enclosures and drives, but I haven't done it yet.

I was playing with using rdiff-backup to make differential backups of just our file shares, but due to lack of a usable web interface I haven't bothered (I don't want to spend time selectively restoring backups for people.. if they can't do it themselves I want no part ;) ). I did start working on one, but there are too many things higher on my priority list.

Re:USB/Firewire drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I plug in and mount my USB disk once a day and run this. I could probably use a for to make it shorter, but... meh.
more information

#!/bin/sh
#SRCDIR requires a trailing /
SRCDIR=/home/acoward/
DSTDIR=/media/usb/acowar d/rsync/

cd $DSTDIR
if [ -d daily.7 ]; then
rm -rf daily.7
fi
if [ -d daily.6 ]; then
mv daily.6 daily.7
fi
if [ -d daily.5 ]; then
mv daily.5 daily.6
fi
if [ -d daily.4 ]; then
mv daily.4 daily.5
fi
if [ -d daily.3 ]; then
mv daily.3 daily.4
fi
if [ -d daily.2 ]; then
mv daily.2 daily.3
fi
if [ -d daily.1 ]; then
mv daily.1 daily.2
fi
if [ -d daily.0 ]; then
mv daily.0 daily.1
fi

mkdir daily.0
rsync -a --progress --stats --delete --link-dest=../daily.1 \
$SRCDIR daily.0/
touch daily.0

Re:USB/Firewire drives

[RGRistroph]

If you are going to keep a week of rsync'd backups, reduce your script to one line by employing the date command and it's formatting option:

rsync -a --progress --stats --delete --link-dest=../Mon $SRCDIR `date +%a`/

Run "date +%a" to see what it does.

Re:My server

[rogabean]

I tend to actually take this a step forward in my thinking...

If it's important enough for me to feel I need to back it up, it's important enough I would not trust anyone else besides me backing it up.

Couple of external drives works great for me. Important stuff is backed up twice (once to each drive).

YMMV

Backups

[mknewman]

You can try these guys: http://www.box.net/ Marc

EVault.com

[gothzilla]

Check out http://www.evault.com/
Very reasonably priced and they maintain offsite backups of their backups.
One thing to keep in mind is transfer speed. I would have used them but I have 40gigs of data to back up and it would take too long to send daily.

Can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Stephen H-B]

Secure. Online. Inexpensive.

Pick two.

Marginally On-Topic Observations Regarding Backups

[PurpleFloyd]

A good thing to remember about backups (and one that no one in this thread has yet brought up) is that most of your data isn't that important. Sure, you've got a 200 gigabyte hard drive that's full to bursting, but how much of that is MP3s and how much is your really important, totally irreplacable data? You know, your finances, your emails, even your vacation pictures?

A quick check of my own hard drive gives me about a gig for my /home directory on the Linux side and about 3.5 gigs for the My Documents and Application Data directories on the Windows side; meanwhile, my Media directory has about 110 gigs in it - all ripped from other media, and thus replacable. Even the 4.5 gig figure could probably be pared down considerably, if I wanted to put the effort into it - especially in Windows, applications tend to leave temporary files everywhere. Although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that many people here have far more data than I, I would also be very surprised to hear many non-business users say that the majority of the information on their hard drives is totally irreplacable - that is, there are more than a few non-professionals who have more space devoted to their own work than they do programs, ripped media, and the like.

Why is this important? It makes it a lot easier to back up your data if you can isolate the important bits. Instead of a fairly expensive solution involving removable hard drives, it's probably possible to fit everything on a much cheaper archival-grade DVD or two - or store everything on a remote backup server for a lot less money. In fact, with only a few gigs of mostly static data to consider, an FTP or SSH-based reciprocal backup arrangement with a friend could work well.

The point here is that, while backing up every single bit on your hard disk is an excellent idea, and will certainly get you back up and running quickly, it can be much more feasable to simply back up the small subset of truly irreplacable data. While it's not as good as a full system backup, it's certainly better than the full system backup you never implemented or used because it was such a hassle. While this kind of system might be unacceptably lax in the buisiness world, it is certainly better than what many home users, including many Slashdotters, are using right now.