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.
17 Comments
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Hi Pete
I know that you want to backup a lot of different files but for just images I guess Googles backup can be an alternative. https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage
At least okey prices, and you get web albums for everything as well.
Cool, maybe I should add that to the list, just by giving it a quick look it does look quite cheap. Quick run up:
20 gb: $5 / year
80 gb: $20 / year
200 gb: $50 / year
Supported operating systems: Windows and Linux (Mac OS X?)
Pros: Get web albums for your photos
Cons/showstopper: no automatic set-it-and-forget-it backup solution
I’d check out SMEStorage.com if I was you. I’m using their service to manage my Microsoft SkyDrive files which gives me 25GB storage for free. I also have a free Gmail account (they turn Gmail into a storage account) with the same provider which gives me an extra 10 GB. I’ve got all my docs backed up but encrypted using the service . The best thing is they provide file splitting so you can upload large file across GMail / SkyDrive etc. This helps for the large video files I have.
Interesting solution, but I don’t think it’s for me. Thanks for the tip though!
I’m infuriated by your ignorance for all the Slackware, Gentoo and Lesbian GNU/Linux users out there, but apart from that, this is a truly great summary!
Haven’t really thought about using this type of solution before, but now I’ll look into it (or just use the unlimited storage of my Flickr pro account).
Really happy to see you already realize the importance of online backup. As you’ve said, JungleDisk can be confusing (not their fault… Amazon S3 pricing is confusing) but the data can be accessed from other applications, too.
However, since you’re looking for backup, SpiderOak is the way to go (for you). Since you’re not on PC or Mac OS, SpiderOak’s backup system is the perfect solution for your situation.
Good luck!
Thank you! Nice to see that your site is rating SpiderOak so highly.
Hi
Iv been trying alot of online backup solutions lately, but very few seems to meet my requirements. I need it to work on a windows server as a service, and I would prefer if it can handle any folder on my network (I have 5 computers), including UNC paths so that one computer on my network can handle all my computers backup needs. Cost should be reasonable, but not the most important factor..
Iv tried Mesh, Dropbox, Syncplicity, DriveHQ, SafeCopy Backup, Backblaze, SpiderOak and JungleDisk. So far. Seems so hard to find a good solution out there. Iv even considered writing my own app to be able to sync with a cloud storage solution
like amazon S3, but that has to be a last resort.
Mesh was in beta, so a 5gb max wasnt enough. It didnt run as a windows service, so that didnt work. Dropbox only allowed me to sync a folder in my documents, and didnt run as a service either. Syncplicity didnt run as a service. DriveHQ was very flexible, but It failed on me and I didnt trust it. SafeCopy couldnt sync network folders but otherwise it was good! Backblaze didnt work on a server at all. SpiderOak could only sync folders in my documents, like Dropbox.
All in all, it seems like most of the ones I tried tries to force me to have my files in very specific locations, by either syncing files in my documents only, or only letting me sync files on my local computer. Sometimes it seems to be a license model problem (they want me to buy a license for each computer) which I dont like. In the end its all about syncing files from one place to another…
I ended up with using JungleDisk because it allows me to do everything I wanted. It runs perfect on a server, and it can sync folders anywhere on my network! Its not restricting in any way in what I want to backup, and it also allows for different cloud services (Amazon S3 USA and Europe or Rackspace today) for storage so the fee may vary depending on where I send my data. Basically I pay a small monthly fee for the software and then depending on which provider you choose different fees for space and transfer volume.
Thats all I have for now, and I found about 15 other online backup services I didnt try…
Wow, that’s a long comment
Not to worry, I like it.
It seems we have very different opinions of SpiderOak, or maybe it works differently in a Windows environment. I had to select the Advanced option to select anything else than the standard My Documents, My Music, Desktop, My Pictures and so on, but after that I could select any directory on my computer, including system folders etc. I suppose I would need to run SpiderOak with elevated permissions in order to read the system folders, but that is to be expected.
I don’t have any objections per se wrt Jungle Disk except the charge confusion, but that is (as has been stated previously) a problem with Amazon S3 and not Jungle Disk in itself.
Another thing I liked with SpiderOak (that you mentioned that you need) is that you can backup several different computers to the same account. I suggest that you take a second look at SpiderOak and specifically look after the Advanced option when selecting what locations you want to back up.
I have no idea if it can run as a Windows service, but I’m pretty sure I can run it as a background service on Ubuntu.
Sorry dude, but your website… If you can’t figure out what to put there, maybe you should leave it blank our take it down. Sorry for being honest.
*or
Good tip about the advanced button. I missed that one somehow. But it still doesnt meet my requirements though. It doesnt allow me to use UNC paths or run as a windows service.
Oh, and as for my website, its a toy used mostly by me personally so I think ill leave it up
of course you should leave it up.
I’ve been using SpiderOak for 5 months on Ubuntu Karmic. I’ve noticed recently that it actually can be a memory hog and bog my machine down when it’s running. I have experimented with turning it off to see if my performance is better, and it absolutely is, in spite of the fact that I’ve scheduled to do its routines in the middle of the night.
From a client side perspective, does JungleDisk work better on Ubuntu? Curious?
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If you talk about online backup, then dropbox is not backup, it is mirror or folder sync. It is simple, but you cannot choose which folder to sync. If you need automatic backup, runs on server as a service, then I would recommend DriveHQ.
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