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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.

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.

If you’re a Carbonite online backup customer, they’ve released yet another way to get at your files when away from your computer.  The company has released a Carbonite iPhone App (it works on iPod Touches as well).

From the CEO of Carbonite:

The Carbonite app gives me access to the backed up files from each of my computers, even if the computers are turned off. And I don’t have to be logged into a Wi-Fi connection or lug my laptop with me. It displays my photos, documents, and other important files and allows me to share any of my backed up files with someone else via email, right from the app. It’s fast and super-simple. I’m really proud of this Carbonite app and I hope you all will find it as useful as I do.

Any Carbonite customers want to comment?  Have you tried it out?  Do you see the trend towards getting to your files on a mobile device a useful one?  Let us know in the comments.

Most people know that Carbonite is a good solution for backing up your PC or Mac. However, what a lot of people don’t know is that you can also access your backed-up files on the go.

A while ago, Carbonite rolled out their new Remote File Access feature.

To access it, go the Carbonite homepage. Up at the top right you will see a link for Remote Access.

Once you’re in there, you can see the files have backed up for your computer(s) and you can navigate the tree view.

There are a few limitations to this. A few types of files can’t be accessed or downloaded via remote file access:

• Windows Encrypted Files
• Mac Package Directories (such as the application packages in the Applications folder)
• Files backed up by Carbonite version 2.3 or earlier (if you started backing up with Carbonite in late 2007 then you have 3.0 or higher).

When you’re using online backup, is having remote file access like Carbonite an important feature for you? Or would you prefer a vendor not have it at all?

Recently I came across this tweet from Ross L. Kodner and he brought up a good point – one of the benefits of an online backup is having your data safe and sound.

If you live in a city that is prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., it kind of defeats the purpose to have your online backup residing in the same city as you.

To that end, I have put this list together of where common online backup vendors have their data centers. Not surprisingly, none of them were willing to give this information on request so this is mainly pieced together from some Google-fu. Therefore, I can’t 100% say for sure that it is accurate, but you get the general idea.

Here is the list:

Mozy

• Salt Lake City
• Dublin
• (likely other EMC data centers)

Carbonite

• Boston
• Beijing

Jungle Disk (S3)/Dropbox
Jungle Disk and Dropbox both use Amazon’s S3 service. While Amazon generally does not disclose where their data centers are, the following are the edge locations for CloudFront, their CDN, so it stands to reason that S3 data is stored there too.
United States

• Ashburn, VA
• Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• Newark, NJ
• Palo Alto, CA
• Seattle, WA
• St. Louis, MO

Europe

• Amsterdam
• Frankfurt
• Dublin
• London

Asia

• Hong Kong
• Tokyo

Jungle Disk (Rackspace)
Since Jungle Disk was acquired by Rackspace, they have started offering storage in Rackspace’s data center too.

• Grapevine, TX
• London
• Hong Kong

SpiderOak

• Chicago

Like I said, this list is likely incomplete. If you have any additions or modifications, leave a comment below.

Where is your data?

In the last few weeks, two online backup services, HP Upline and Yahoo Briefcase have both announced that they are closing.

While some have said that this is a sign that the online backup market is not sustainable, both Mozy and Carbonite have been clever and used it as an opportunity .

Nate from Mozy has posted a blog post entitled “Hey Upline Users, We Love You!” giving a discount code to ex-Upline users.

Dave Friend, co-founder and CEO of Carbonite, has posted two blog posts: one on Yahoo Briefcase and one on HP Upline, discussing the decision to close both.

By the way, I really appreciate the fact that Dave personally blogs and shares his insight. It’s great.

What do you think, is Upline and Briefcase a sign of things to come, or is it just separating the wheat from the chaff?

Recently I posted about how to backup your ScanSnap profile settings if you are on the Mac. Here is how to do it on Windows.

The ScanSnap settings are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Application Data\PFU\ScanSnap.

Obviously, “yourusername” would be replaced with your Windows username.

If you can’t see the “Application Data” folder, go up to Tools | Folder Options and set it to be able to see hidden files and folders.

Each of those “PFUSsMon0000x” folders corresponds to one of your profiles, but I would recommend backing up the entire ScanSnap folder.

If you use a backup system like Mozy or Carbonite, make sure you add the ScanSnap folder to be backed up. Otherwise, just copy the folder somewhere.

In case you’re wondering what PFU is, that is a subsidiary of Fujitsu and it is them that developed the ScanSnap.

Hope this helps to protect your ScanSnap settings. Let us know if it does.

Dave Friend, the CEO of Carbonite, wrote a blog post the other day about his experience actually using his product.

According to a recently released survey by Compuware, most data loss is attributable to either user negligence or malice. Only 1% of data loss is due to hackers. I loved the headline on this story: “3/4 idiots, 1/4 bitterness.”

I have to confess to being part of the “idiot” crowd. Three weeks ago I left my laptop sitting on my seat when I got off the train in New York. I remembered it just in time to see my train, with laptop still aboard, disappearing down the track. Except for occasionally recovering individual files that I accidentally delete or overwrite, I haven’t actually had a PC disaster since starting Carbonite 3 years ago. So, aside from the pain of having to buy a new laptop, it was fun to use my own product to get everything back. I was really proud of how well it worked.

Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago. I was at the Vancouver airport and took the shuttle bus to the parking lot. I went up to the front of the bus to tell the driver where I was parked and chatted with him a bit. When we stopped, I jumped off and waved goodbye.

It was then that I realized that I had left my backpack with my MacBook Pro (aka my third child) and my car keys (!) on the bus. I turned around and started running back, but luckily he was still sitting there and I was able to get my bag back.

When we think about backing up our files, we always think about hard drives failing or fire or theft, but you also have to remember the idiot factor. I sure do now.

A new version of Carbonite (3.7) has been announced.

Here is the PR-speak:

“We spent a significant amount of time talking with customers for this upgrade of Carbonite,” said David Friend, founder and CEO of Carbonite. “We’ve always had the goal of Carbonite being the simplest online backup to use and we’ve been lauded for our success in that goal, but we are seeking perfection for the day-to-day experience of using Carbonite. We found that our users had some great feedback that, when implemented in Release 3.7, makes Carbonite even easier to use.”

Carbonite also spent time honing performance for version 3.7. Through a series of improvements to the way Carbonite monitors computer resources, Carbonite will offer better system performance during the initial scan and backup upload.

It will be released over the next few weeks. As soon as I get more details on what is actually in there, I’ll post more.

Source: Sys-Con