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Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Cloud Backup Solutions That You Recommend?
New submitter OneHundredAndTen writes: After having used the services of CrashPlan for my backups for a few years now, I have just learned that CrashPlan is exiting the home backup business. Although this won't be happening for another 14 months, they have the chutzpah of recommending a provider (Carbonite) that does not support Linux. Looking in the net, there are not so many alternatives available -- unless you go with somebody that charges you $5/mo and up for a measly 100GB, or (occasionally) 1TB. Fine for a little phone, but not for the several TB worth of video I have shot over the years.
Anybody aware of decent cloud backup solutions that support Linux, and that offer a maximum backup capacity that is not ridiculously small? Reader cornjones asks a similar question: My use case:
Backups for several computers, both at my house and scattered family machines
Encrypted locally by a key I set, only encrypted bits are stored offsite
I have a copy of my data onsite. I primarily want to protect against lost drives or fire (or ransomware attack)
Ideally, I would be able to point it at a NAS, which I don't have now.
The plan I was on was 10 computers, unlimited data, for 4 years @ $429. Lower is better, but I am willing to pay in that range.
Across my machines, I probably have about 1TB of bulk storage and 10 or so machines w/, say, 60GB backups each.
Anybody aware of decent cloud backup solutions that support Linux, and that offer a maximum backup capacity that is not ridiculously small? Reader cornjones asks a similar question: My use case:
Backups for several computers, both at my house and scattered family machines
Encrypted locally by a key I set, only encrypted bits are stored offsite
I have a copy of my data onsite. I primarily want to protect against lost drives or fire (or ransomware attack)
Ideally, I would be able to point it at a NAS, which I don't have now.
The plan I was on was 10 computers, unlimited data, for 4 years @ $429. Lower is better, but I am willing to pay in that range.
Across my machines, I probably have about 1TB of bulk storage and 10 or so machines w/, say, 60GB backups each.
I'm lucky enough to manage IT and servers for a pair of businesses in physically different locations. Both are running FreeNAS for their local storage. Both cross backup to one another using ZFS SEND/RECV. This gives full snapshotted history on both physical locations of both's complete storage. Pretty handy!
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.
> it doesn't sound like they have a Linux client
For Linux, Backblaze offers "B2 Object Storage" with a large list of established Linux clients supporting it. You can see the list on this web page: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/i... (for Linux, look for the little pictures of a penguin).
Solutions that backup to Backblaze B2 include: Duplicity, HashBackup, Transmit (by Panic), and rclone
Disclaimer: I work for Backblaze.
> if your out of touch with the server for 30 days it's deleted
Some clarification: For any computer that does not "phone home" we allow up to 6 months before even threatening to delete your backup, and we warn you first quite a bit (after that).
However, if the computer is backing up every day but you have an external hard drive (like a Drobo) and you leave the Drobo unplugged for more than 30 days, we warn you profusely by BOTH email and by popup dialogs and then we delete the data. If at some later date you plug the Drobo back in you need to repush the contents from scratch.
We are actively researching whether we (Backblaze) can extend this to be longer (like 60 days or 90 days) without losing too much money, but if you install today you have to live with "external drives must be plugged into the laptop host at least once every 30 days".
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.
> I'd love to see some hard data on the chance of data loss on those cloud services vs. typical home set-ups.
Backblaze uses a Reed Solomon encoding where every file is replicated across 20 different hard drives in 20 different locations in our datacenter. We can lose up to three full computers out of the 20 and your data is still both safe AND available. And a really good feature is we monitor EVERY SINGLE DRIVE and have datacenter employees replacing drives that have gone bad 7 days a week.
However, a counter point is that if you forget to pay Backblaze your monthly bill for as little as 60 days we delete your data to make room for paying customers. I really think people underestimate how easily this can occur purely by accident. For example, the credit card on file expires, and the employee who was signed up to get alerts retired the year before and the emails are not being read anymore.
For all of the reasons above, to my closest friends I recommend BOTH for data you would be really bummed out to lose. Keep the live copy, plus a backup at home on a hard drive, and a copy in Backblaze for when your house burns down. This is what I do, and it lets me sleep at night.
Disclaimer: I work for Backblaze.
> I'm currently backing up 210GB and the estimate is 21 days
If you are using Backblaze, make sure you "Check for Updates" (menu option) and make sure you are running the 5.0 client we just released last week. Then if you want to make faster progress, turn off all power savings modes on your computer so it won't sleep, and then go into Backblaze "Settings..." menu and turn off "Automatic Threads/Throttle" and manually set the number of threads high enough to saturate your network. Let it run all night long for several nights in a row then check the time estimates again.