Online Backup Companies Corporate Blogs

REVIEW: Online Backup Services - Carbonite, SOS, Mozy, Media Max, Drive HQ, Orbit Files, Disk Hero, Backup Right, Alentus, ConnectNC, RemoteBackup911, and Data Deposit Box (12 Companies)

13 Aug 2007

August 13, 2007

Online Backup Services

What is Online Backup
Online Backup allows backing up your computer data to remote server on the Internet. This is different from regular backup approaches where you backup your files to another hard drive, tape or CD/DVD.

There are (at least) 2 big advantages to this approach:

Data is stored off-site. This means that backup is stored in location geographically remote from original data as opposed to tape/DVD laying on the shelf next to your computer. This protects from physical damages by fire, flood etc.
Backup could be done anytime you are connected to the Internet. This is important for laptops where it’s not always (in fact rarely) connected to tape/DVD/external drive.

Online Backup Service is a company maintaining such a server and providing software to backup/restore data to/from it.

Requirements
I’m kind of picky and I have very specific requirements for Online Backup Service. Not all of these could be relevant for all users. But if all of these are met then it is a very good service.

Here is what I expect from Online Backup Service:

Price: At least 1GB for at most $10/month
Continuous backup: Automatic detection and backup of files that have changed, as opposed to scheduled backups happening say every night at 3am.
Locked files backup: Ability to backup files while applications have them open. Like Outlook .pst or OneNote. Basically I don’t want to close the app just to make backup happy. For Windows XP/2003 it means that backup should be using Volume Shadow Copy technology.
Backup of files with Encrypted NTFS attribute set. My most important files are stored encrypted on my hard drive. This is a feature of Windows NTFS file system. Special care should be taken by backup software to backup these files.
Security: Files should be encrypted by client software before they are transmitted to server and Service Company’s personal should not be able to decrypt it, ever. It means ability to specify custom encryption key that is not transmitted/shared with Service Company.
Fast backup and restore (should utilize bandwidth of my DSL connection).
Versioning support: At least 5 previous versions of any file should be available for restore. This is important when file gets corrupted and then backed up. If only latest version of file is stored then the data is lost. On the other hand if I can restore backed up version of this file from say last week then I may have to redo some work but most of it will be restored. Also when file is deleted backup server should keep it for some time to protect from accidental deletions.
Ability to select anything for backup, this means any folders (including so called ‘system folders’). Also option to include/exclude files based on file extension.

Review of Online Backup Services
Carbonite
Too simplistic. Cannot select all .exe’s for example. They are always excluded.

SOS Online Backup
Client fails to react to local file changes.

Mozy (Beta) (My Personal Choice)
Good:

Supports continuous backup as well as Scheduled backup.
Small and fast client
Restore download speed as fast as I can go
Responsive tech support
2GB Free
Very good UI to select what to backup with filtering by file type and other criteria
Ability to type-in custom encryption key or use any file (like your personal photo) to derive a key from it.
Supports multiple file versions
Can backup opened files
If multiple users store the same file they only store it once. It saves upload time.

Bad:

Under-utilizes upload speed (~50KB/sec when my DSL can do 80), download is OK
Backup of 33000 small files took 13 hours
Cannot backup NTFS encrypted files
Does not backup empty directories
WHOLE RESTORE PROCESS (see below)
Building restore set takes a really long time. It took more than 30 hours for my backup set to build (I have ~600MB in ~33000 files). If I had really lost my files I would be sitting on the edge of my seat all this time very stressed and wondering if it will complete successfully, etc.
Downloading, extracting and then decrypting .zip files essentially takes triple disk space and it is a tedious manual process
Internet Explorer cannot handle your restore page with 33000 files. It just eats all memory+CPU and then hangs. Firefox works, but is very slow.

Other:

Limit on number of restores per month (currently 6). I don’t consider it to be a limitation as hopefully you will never have to restore/ And if you do then 6 times is plenty.
I have received an email from Mozy tech support confirming that they are aware of limitations of their Restore process and are actively working on Restore Client

Mediamax (Streamload)
Good:

25GB FREE

Bad:

Client is way too simple and it hangs, no continuous backup

DriveHQ
Good:

Simple yet pretty good.
1GB free
Keeps up to 10 versions in history.
Reacts to file changes right away.
Can select file exclusion mask.
Very fast Backup and Restore.
Custom encryption key.
Transfer rate: UP=120 DOWN=(160 for my Perforce test)I spoke too soon. Uploading many small files is very slow: 5-10KB/sec.
VERY quick restore. Using local cache directory in AppData folder.
Responsive customer support

Bad:

Restoring old historic version does not work (promised to fix soon)
Limit on download bandwidth for free accounts=200MB/month
2 Backup tasks max for free account
Does not look like it supports Volume Shadow Copy (cannot backup opened/locked files)

OrbitFiles
Bad:

Cannot create account
Does not look like it supports continuous backup
Their mail server sent me warning that my mail with question cannot be delivered for 48 hours

DiskHero
Bad:

Childish amateur project, too many problems
Only one Continuous backup job
Fails to detect changed files
4 executables, long install, installs SQL server Express Edition
Client hangs and eats 100% CPU often, very slow
No way to filter out/in extensions in certain folder
No way to configure encryption key

BackupRight
Good:

Very powerful file selection filter. Can include/exclude files/directories based on starts-with/contains/ends-with and even RegExp
Ability to enter encryption key
Uses Volume Shadow Copy
Very configurable jobs (many options)
Can create off-site or local backups
Can backup System State (uses NT Backup to create system state snapshot)
Multi-version support
Define retention policy
Not super-fast, but does not struggle with many files
Extensive reports by email

Bad:

No continuous backup

Other:

Java Client

Alentus
Good:

Custom encryption key
Interruptible UI
Backup of 27000 small files took 4:30
Advanced file selection filters (almost RegExp)

Bad:

No continuous backup
Require too much information up front for the trial but accept fake credit card #

Other:

Client is called SecureStor

ConnectNC
Exact same client as Alentus.com, looks like client is called NovaStor

RemoteBackup911
Exact same client as BackupRight. Client software is called PMR Tech Remote Backup.
Bad:

Big client download (30MB) and very slow (29KB/sec). I had to use download manager to get it.

DataDepositBox
Good:

Continuous backup. Reacts to file updates correctly
Low CPU usage
Ability to suspend any activity if keyboard or mouse are touched
Pay as you go. Charges $0.01/MB for used server storage. So if you use only 100MB it will cost $1/month
Uses delta technology to only send portions of file that have changed. Improves upload speed and versions use less storage space on the server.
Restoring ~27000 files took 4 hours 30 minutes

Bad:

No way to specify my own key
Cannot backup open files but waits for them to become available.
No way to filter files by type
No way to select individual files
Restore client does not support restoring previous versions. Only WEB interface allows it
Backing up ~27000 files took 17 hours
Require valid credit card # for trial

Conclusions

Based on the above review, users can pick the appropriate company for their personal or business use.