So, I’ve been thinking about getting an online backup solution. I started out with thinking that I should get Dropbox, since I have the free version already and it’s really simple for sharing files, it’s syncs automatically and basically I don’t have to think about it.
The main objective for me is to backup my photos, since I have all my photos on my computer. So far I’m just backing up to an external harddrive that sits on top of my computer. This is inadequate for a number of reasons:
- if my computer gets stolen, my backup gets stolen
- if my house gets struck by a catastrophic event, such as a fire; earthquake; meteor; airplane crash; lightning bolt, it’s lost
- if my external harddrive crashes, my backup is lost
- I only sync my data once a day, making it possible to delete a file before it’s backed up and thus deleting it forever
When tweeting about this somewhat nerdy topic (but I must stress that this is very important for you non-geeks if you have precious data like photos on your computer as well ) I got some suggestions other than Dropbox. I’ll go through them down here and explain my reasons for not using them since there seems to be a general interest among my nerd friends 
When I list operating systems I’m going to list Linux as Ubuntu, since that’s what I use. You may show your dismay with me for this in the comments.
Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com)
- Basic: 2gb for free
- Pro 50: 50gb for $9.99 / month
- Pro 100: 100gb for $19.99 / month
Supported operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu (and more Linux systems)
Pros: It’s integrated into the operating system. It syncs automatically from the source computer and shares it to all the other computers that I have Dropbox on.
Cons: I haven’t found a way to disable this sync so that I won’t end up with my photos on all my computer, for instance, I don’t want my personal photos on my work computer (I could just not use my personal account on my work computer, but still)
Ubuntu One (http://one.ubuntu.com)
- Everyone: 2gb for free
- Store (much) more: 50gb for $10 / month
Supported operating systems: Ubuntu (only Ubuntu)
Pros: It’s integrated into the operating system. It syncs automatically from the source computer and shares it to all the other (Ubuntu) computers that I have Ubuntu one on.
Showstopper: It only works on Ubuntu, which is a show stopper for me. Even if Ubuntu is my system of choice today, I don’t know what I’ll use in the future. Maybe I need to restore my backup to a Mac or (shudder) Windows box.
Backblaze (https://www.backblaze.com)
- Cost: $5 / month or $50 / year for unlimited storage
Supported operating systems: Windows and Mac OS X
Pros: it’s very cheap! As far as I can tell, it syncs automatically from the source computer and stores it in a safe location. You can get some kind of extra secure thing which seems insane. You can get a restore copy on a USB drive shipped to you. That’s awesome!
Cons: not integrated as far as I can tell.
Showstopper: it doesn’t run on Ubuntu.
Spideroak (https://spideroak.com)
- Free account: 2gb
- Plus account: $10/month per 100gb or $100/year per 100gb
Supported operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu (and Fedora and Debian)
Pros: Whoa, that’s cheap! It’s also scalable with a pretty easy-to-get pricing model (more about this later). It syncs automatically as far as I can tell and you can share stuff.
Cons: not integrated as far as I can tell.
Jungle Disk (http://jungledisk.com/)
- Personal – Simply Backup: As low as $2 / month (+ storage fees)
- Personal – Desktop Edition: As low as $3 / month (+ storage fees)
The storage fees are as follows (copied from their page):
Storage
Amazon S3 EU – only $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
First 5 GB Storage FREEData Transfer
FREE data uploaded until June 30, 2010! $0.10 per GB of data uploaded thereafter
$0.17 per GB of data downloadedData Request
$0.01 per 1000 upload requests
$0.01 per 10,000 download requests
Supported operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (not sure what specific distros…)
Pros: It seems quite cheap… It’s cross platform and the desktop version seems integrated into the operating system.
Cons: Although it seems cheap, I’m having difficulty trying to calculate it.
Calculation rambling: What exactly is an upload request? Do I use one per file? If I have 100 000 files that would be 100 x $0.01 = $1. Ok, fair enough, let me count the number of photos I have… ok, I have about 10805 photos and videos in my Photos directory. That’s $0.10805. Wow, that’s cheap. Ok, how many GB is that? 22 gb at $0.15 = $3.3. So that would give me an initial cost of $3.40805 for uploading my photos and a monthly cost of $3.3 as long as I don’t upload anything else. Cool. Oh, wait, there’s the initial cost of $3 per month as well, adding up to $6.3 per month with my current number of files.
Cost Comparison
| Name | 2gb | 50gb | 100gb |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dropbox | Free | $9.99 | $19.99 |
| Ubuntu One | Free | $9.99 | N/A |
| Backblaze | $5 | $5 | $5 |
| Spideroak | Free | N/A | $10 |
| Jungle Disc | $3.3 | $10.5 | $18 |
Ok, I’ve read up on some background on Dropbox and Ubuntu One and Jungle Disc, and they all use Amazon S3 as their data storage provider. So that they have kind of similar pricing at 50 and 100 gb is not very surprising. What is surprising is that Spideroak and Backblaze can be that amazingly cheap. Also, checking up the different providers on Wikipedia gives some interesting information. All of these systems are proprietary (the server side is at least, some of the tools and clients are open source, like the Ubuntu One, Dropbox, and Spideroak) but according to Wikipedia, Spideroak intends to open source the server as well. Spideroak also has some fancy encryption stuff that seems really nice and is supposed to make it impossible for employees to access my data, which I like a lot. Best not forget your password though.
Conclusion
All in all, Spideroak seems the best choice for me, they cost the least amongst the cross platform versions, and they have some intention to go open source which is a nice thing.
