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Sometimes when we are trying to figure out how to set up our paperless system, it can be helpful to see how others do things. Macworld contributor Lex Friedman recently wrote an article about his own backup plan.

For what it is worth, my setup is almost exactly the same as his. The only difference is that I stopped having my backup drive plugged into my Airport Extreme, and moved back to having it plugged in locally. Yes it is a bit annoying having to plug it in/dismount it when I am moving my MacBook Pro, but for me I found having my backup wireless slowed things down. This way, I don’t even notice when Time Machine runs.

Also, I have a 2 TB Western Digital Elements drive partitioned – part of it for SuperDuper! and the rest for Time Machine.

Lex says:

In his conclusion to his own backup write-up, Dan Frakes wrote that he’s “admittedly paranoid about losing” his data. So should we all be. My total financial investment in my backup solution is cheap—many 1TB hard drives can be had for under $100, and the $60 that I pay CrashPlan each year is similarly affordable. My data, on the other hand, is priceless. Hard drives crash.

I totally agree. Having multiple backups is important and so cheap nowadays.

How about you, what is your backup setup? Let us know your ideas in the comments.

(Photo by aparejador)

Whenever I do a post about online backup or file syncing, I almost always get a comment or a tweet like this one. Essentially, “hey, how come you didn’t mention my favorite: SugarSync?”

I was happy to see that SugarSync was at Macworld Expo, so I dropped by their booth to ask them what the fuss was about.

Of course, it is almost impossible to get into a discussion about file syncing without bringing up the D-word, but the guys at the booth were cool about it and obviously get questioned on the comparison a lot.

Here is what they say makes SugarSync better than the alternatives:

• It is convenient for users. Since you can specify any folder on your drive to be synced, you don’t have to worry about remembering to save your files in a certain folder. You and others can just go about doing what you do normally, and things will be synced in the background
• It is more mobile. They have clients for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian
• More free storage. Their free plan gives you 5 GB storage
• More flexible pricing. They have a 30 GB plan starting at $4.99/month and the $9.99/month plan gives you 60 GB
• Easier sharing. To send a link to a file or folder, it doesn’t need to be moved to a Public folder. You just right-click and go.

So there you go SugarSync fans, here is your chance to sound off in the comments about why you like it better. Are you happy now?!?

In case you haven’t heard, Mozy, one of the main players in online backup, has discontinued their unlimited backup plan, moving to plans based on usage and the number of computers that you have.

Now, for $5.99 you get 50 GB for one computer, or for $9.99/month you can use 125 GB for up to three computers.

For your average home user just backing up some documents and photos, this may not make much of a difference, but more heavy users are going to be hit with a big increase.

Needless to say, other online backup vendors are having a field day with this. Carbonite is welcoming new subscribers on Twitter and Crashplan is running a special 15% discount for Mozy users.

If you are caught up in Mozygate and want to switch, Lifehacker has posted the best, most affordable alternatives to Mozy for unlimited backups.

What do you think of all this? Is it the first step towards the end of unlimited online backup? If you’re a Mozy subscriber, are you jumping ship? Let us know what you’re doing in the comments.

(Photo by millicent_bystander)

In honor of the fact that I am writing this while at Macworld Expo, I thought I would point out an article from Macworld’s website.

DocumentSnap reader Brooke (a name that doesn’t at all bring back painful childhood taunting memories) pointed out this article: Which online backup service is right for you?.

If you’re thinking of choosing an online backup, it is a pretty good comparison.

If you don’t back up your Mac’s files, then it’s a matter of when—not if—you’ll lose data that’s precious to you. Apple already robbed Mac users of any excuse not to back up regularly with Time Machine. But a single bad power surge, or a true disaster like fire or vicious weather, could render your Time Machine backups worthless.

Fortunately, off-site backup is easier than ever. A slew of Web services offer affordable online backup for your Mac. These services are often simple to use as well: you install software from the service on your computer, and it backs up your files over the Internet. By keeping current copies of your treasured data far away from your home, you can feel far more confident that your files are safe.

The article runs through Backblaze, Mozy, Carbonite, Jungle Disk, Dropbox, and Crashplan. Even though it is a Macworld article, all of those services are cross-platform.

Do you disagree with any of their points, or do you love a service that they didn’t mention? Lets hear about it in the comments.

If you are a Mac OS X user, you will be familiar with Time Machine. If you are reading this site I would hope you are, as it is the super-easy backup solution that is built into the OS.

The premise of Time Machine is you plug in an external hard drive, your Mac detects it, and off you go backing up without having to do much of anything.

However, what happens if you don’t have an external hard drive, but you have another computer, particularly a Windows or Linux machine, on your network that you want to use for your backups?

Lifehacker has posted a guide (two actually) on how to accomplish this.

It is not for the faint of heart or people who don’t like messing around in the Terminal, but long story short you:

1. Create a shared folder on the Windows machine
2. Change a setting in the Mac to open a hidden Time Machine option
3. Do some Terminal trickery to get Time Machine to start doing the backup to the Windows machine

I recommend you read this Lifehacker post first so that you know what is going on, and in particular read the comments which provide some additional input.

Then, if you want to go for it, read this Lifehacker post which has a shell script that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Remember, this all adds a layer of complexity over and above simply plugging a drive in, so I would recommend being careful and test your backups regularly.

Do you have any other Time Machine hacks? Let’s hear them in the comments.

(Photo by AdamL212)

I always appreciate it when people put their decision-making and evaluation thought processes online when making a purchase. It helps not only them (to write it out) but the rest of us too.

I came across this post by Jonathan Camp over at irondojo where he runs through his evaluation of Mozy, Jungle Disk, and Wuala.

I don’t like making backups, but I do enjoy trying out new software (beta, if possible). Over the last several years I’ve used a number of backup systems; the merits of each I will attempt to describe here.

It’s an incredibly thorough and helpful writeup of his three contestants. Which one did he choose? You’ll have to read to find out. If you’re in the market for an online backup provider, it’s worth it.

(Photo by newsongNY)

Online backup vendor Carbonite has recently rolled out an update to their client software, Carbonite 4.0.

Sadly, the Carbonite 4.0 update is for Windows only, but the company has stated that the Mac version is in the works.

If you’re an existing Carbonite customer, they’re in the process of rolling out the update. If you’re not, they have a 15 day free trial if you want to check it out. The free trial will let you back up everything except video and music.

I decided to check out the new version and see what the highlights are, so here are some of the key points:

• A Restore Manager gives you an interface to restore specific files based on a number of criteria
• Custom Setup to give you more control on what is backed up when, and lets you manage your own encryption key
• Restore Options to let you choose which files to restore first and to help you migrate operating systems
• Versioning to let you restore different versions of changed files
• Some other miscellaneous changes

Restore Manager

The new Restore Manager lets you specific files, browse your backup drive, or just restore everything.

You can use file search to find a name, date, or type of file.

You can also, of course, browse the drive to find your files that way.

By the way, if you delete a file, Carbonite only keeps it for 30 days. Something to keep in mind.

Custom Setup

Carbonite says that 95% of their users just stick with the defaults, but they’ve introduced a more streamlined custom setup section for the power users.

You can:

• Customize what is backed up
• Schedule and manage the backup times
• Manage your own encryption key

The encryption key setting is great for people who want it so that no Carbonite employee can get at their files. (Of course, on the flip side, that means that they can’t help you get your files in the event of some problem).

Just in case you didn’t know, here’s how you can tell what’s being backed up: a green or yellow dot on the file or folder means it’s being backed up. No dot, no backup

Restore Options

You can restore all data with some options:

• Priority file restore: You can choose which files get restored first. This is a good option if you need to do a big restore but don’t want to wait for certain critical files.
• Migration wizard: If you are restoring to a new operating system, for example you backed up on Windows XP but need to restore to Windows 7, chances are your user information and directory locations have changed. The migration wizard will help you map this.
• Summary report at the end: If you want a report of what was restored, you can view it and print it out (but as a DocumentSnap reader, you wouldn’t do that would you?)

Versioning

If you’ve messed up a file and want to restore a previous version, you can do so. Just search for the file in Restore Search and then choose which version you want to restore.

Other Goodies

They’ve streamlined the Info Centre to give it a more clean and clear look.

If you have multiple computers, you can give each machine a nickname so you know which files are from where.

There are other things, but these are the main changes. Any Carbonite users out there on 4.0 yet? How do you like it? Drop a note in the comments and let us know.

So you think your hard drive is on its last legs.

You’re no computer genius, but you know enough to know that the sound your computer is making? It’s not supposed to sound like that.

The first thing you need to do of course is backup your data, but how do you know how bad the sound really is?

The data recovery company Datacent has a page with hard drive sounds that I find way too entertaining.

For each brand of hard drive, you can click the play button and listen to the various sounds that a dying hard drive makes. Then you can click into the manufacturer to get more information on all the problems that brand can have.

So, if you ever want to hear what a Seagate “nasty drilling noise” sounds like, now you can know before finding out the hard way.

(Photo by jon_a_ross)

Since I’ve done quite a few Mac posts lately, I thought I’d throw something out for my awesome Windows users (don’t worry Windows faithful, I have even more coming soon).

A while ago Mozy released their version 2.0 software, but for Windows only (the Mac version will be out later in 2010).  I thought I’d take a look and see what is new/improved.

Now Prettier

Mozy has improved the UI somewhat.  The fonts and the buttons are a bit bigger and easier to read.  It’s still not the most beautiful UI in the world, but I guess with online backup software, the important part is what happens on the server, not on your computer.

Now Faster?

Mozy claims that Mozy 2.0 is “up to” 25% faster at transferring files to their servers.  I don’t really have a way to empirically test this, but I will take their word for it that they’ve made client-side improvements to speed things up.  It’ll be interesting to see if the Mac version has similar speed increases.

Since slow uploads can be one of the biggest issues with online backup, anything they can do to speed things up is great.

Local and Online Backup

Whenever someone asks if they should go with local backup or online backup, my answer is always “Yes”.  In other words, you want to have your critical files in as many places as you can, both locally and offsite.

The biggest new feature of Mozy 2.0 is what they are calling “2xProtect”.  This new feature is sort of like what CrashPlan does.  In addition to backing up your files online, you can also back them up to a local drive. A very welcome addition.

I had a bunch of screenshots of 2.0 ready to go for this article, but my VMWare Windows install has just started going crazy so I will post them later.

If you want to check out Mozy 2.0, it is free for 2 Gigs of backup, or $4.95 a month for the Unlimited Home version.  There is also a Pro version for businesses.

In the meantime, any Windows users want to chime in on the 2.0 upgrade?  Do you find it is actually faster?  Any general experiences with Mozy pro or con? Leave a note in the comments.

As many people know, I am a big believer in a multi-pronged approach to backing up your data.

Yes I am a fan of online backup, but it is good to have your backup local as well. You can never have your important data in too many locations.

Most people, myself included, start out with a cheap external hard drive that they picked up at Costco or wherever, but if you want to take things to the next level, a popular choice is the Drobo.

A Drobo Is Not A Hard Drive

How is a Drobo different from an external drive? Well, to start with, a Drobo isn’t a drive at all. You can think of it as a container that you put hard drives into.

What you do is pick up some good quality hard drives (for example, some 2TB Western Digitals), and put them into the Drobo.

The Drobo will then mirror your data on all the drives, so that if one drive fails (as they often do), your data will be safe on the other drives. You can just swap out the bad drive and put in a new one. You can expand your storage by just adding new drives.

Different Drobos For Different Jobs

There are five different models of Drobos. I’m only going to bother mentioning three of them because frankly, the DroboPro and DroboElite are just crazy expensive.

• Drobo: The original Drobo can take up to four hard drives for up to 16TB of storage. It can connect to your computer with FireWire 800 or USB 2.0
• Drobo S: The next model up is the Drobo S, which has increased speed, hard drive bays, and can connect to your computer with FireWire, USB, or eSATA (if you don’t know what that is, you don’t need it). The Drobo S can survive two hard drives failing at the same time and has “self healing technology”, which just means that it is constantly checking your drives and flags bad areas
• Drobo FS: Drobo FS is built for file sharing. It has a Gigabit network port and will attach (obviously) to a network. It has five hard drive bays and has the same dual drive failure and self-healing technology as the Drobo S

Things To Know

There are some things that you should be aware of if you are thinking about picking up a Drobo:

• Storage: To accomplish the data mirroring, quite a bit of the hard drive space is taken up as “overhead”. Drobo provides a capacity calculator so you can tell how much actual space you’ll have.
• Noise: Some people report that their Drobo is quite loud, while other people say they can’t hear theirs at all. I don’t know if it is people with different sensitivities, or bad batches, or what. If you have a Drobo, let us know in the comments what your noise situation is like.
• Price: Drobos are definitely more expensive than just picking up an external hard drive (especially since you need to buy drives too), so that may be an issue for some people

If you have a Drobo, or another “RAID-like” solution that goes beyond just an external HD, let us know in the comments how that is going for you.