Web-based Backup Solutions: Which One Is Right for You?

Date: May 12, 2006

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For most individuals—and almost every business in the world—backups are both a necessity and a pain in the figurative posterior. For some, this pain comes because backups, particularly tape backups, can be difficult to manage. For others, it is because increasing data creation by users requires larger and higher capacity backup systems. And for others, it is that backups are simply not simple in the way that antivirus or even firewalls are now simple.

Either way, the cost, complexity and confusion for businesses and individuals are increasing. It should come as no surprise, then, that more and more people are wondering what happened to online backups. In the heyday of the ’90s, one of the key features of the Internet was supposed to be the ability to seamlessly, securely, and inexpensively store our files there.

The earliest solutions came in the form of services such as X-Drive which, although popular, simply never gained mass appeal. Most of these services were merely 10MB–25MB of space on some server, not really "backup" in the more traditional sense.

On the flip side, an increasing number of SoHo and home users have begun to realize that backups are just as important as, if not more critical than, the new mainstays of PC life: antivirus, antispyware, and firewalls. In fact, if David Friend of Carbonite is to be believed, fast, effective and affordable backups would make many of those technologies, which he calls "reactionary," obsolete.

These two forces—the desire to get at your data from anywhere and the need for more cost-effective backups—have caused a veritable rush of new Web-based backup solutions to spring up in the last few years.

This article examines two aspects to online backups. The first are "traditional" backup solutions brought to the online world. These solutions enable users to back up specific files or their entire hard drives to online services. The second is a growing tendency by users to put a staggering amount of information "in the cloud." Information such as bookmarks (del.icio.us), photos (Flickr), and email (Gmail) are discussed.

In fact, many smart users are turning to a balance between the two worlds: keeping backups of their daily information such as email and bookmarks on Gmail and delicious while backing up their hard drives in case of catastrophic events. This balance enables users to be both mobile and confident that they will never again lose a major presentation just because their two-year-old thought their laptop was thirsty.

Why Backups Suck

Personally, I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with storage and backups. Although I’ve always loved seeing how the technology evolved, I’ve hated the complexity, the cost, and the inability for a backup solution to "just work." Whether it was installing a new set of storage clusters at a major hospital or simply getting one-click (never mind no-click) home backups to function on a regular basis, I have come to the conclusion that backups are a pain.

And, truth be told, as a result I don’t back up anywhere near as often as I should. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably don’t, either, though you (like me) will kick yourself if you’re ever in a situation in which backups would have come in just a little bit handy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried a variety of solutions. First, I’d sync up my laptop and my desktop, so that both always had my current files on there. This was fine, except that email wasn’t so easy. So I started having my mail server forward all emails to my Gmail account. But then I had two copies of emails, neither of which always had the entire conversation in them. Then I grabbed a USB-based hard drive that I attached to the computer, but the damned thing worked only half the time, required me to schedule backups (which only worked half the time), and sometimes the software (which I won’t name) simply stopped working.

A few months ago, I decided to just suck it up and order some space at a file-server host so I could dump files there once a week, but dumping 20GB of data every week got old real, real quick.

It was at that point that I realized there must be something smarter out there. I mean, in my enterprise life we’d begun to play around with streaming data to the backup clusters, so why wasn’t there something similar for me at home? Thankfully, I found out, there are quite a few options for users who don’t feel like spending $100–$250 on a backup drive, want the peace of mind that a professional backup solution provides but want to skip the complexity.

Over the course of this article, we will be exploring several of the solutions that I have taken a look at. Many of these solutions involve getting past the bottlenecks that have plagued online backups for so many years. Until recently, the biggest problem with online backups was that backing up massive amounts of data simply took too much time. Between increasing broadband penetration (and speed) and the capability for software to stream in the background, you no longer need to wait through a 20GB dump. It can happen while you sleep or in drips and drops throughout your workday.

The Bottlenecks Are Dying

There are a number of reasons why online backups and online storage failed during the original dot-com boom. Some of these are management-related; some were around the fact that few users had any use for 10MB of space that they could get to only via dialup connections. The biggest bottlenecks were storage costs at the hosts (hence, 10MB of space instead of 10GB), cost of bandwidth at the host, overall broadband availability, and awareness of the need to back up data at home or in a small business.

Everyone knows how much storage costs have dropped. Not only have they dropped, but new technology means that extra capacity on individual servers can be clustered together, as opposed to needing to buy massive dedicated storage units. This situation has allowed newer startups, as well as established infrastructure players, to deliver solutions of 20GB–100GB for the same cost to their business as 20MB–50MB would have cost them just 6 or 7 years ago.

In addition, the plummeting costs of enterprise bandwidth (from $5000/Mbps to less than $500/Mbps) meant that extra storage is suddenly much more available. In fact, it really means that the cost of managing an online GB of storage is nearly $0. If you thought 2GB of Gmail space was a lot, how about when it hits 1TB in 5 years? Soon and very soon, the cost of storage will be so low that it might as well be free.

The final piece of the puzzle, then, has been an increased awareness by users of how critically important backups are. Part of this is surely due to how much more data a typical user keeps (photos, emails, jokes, home videos), and part is almost certainly due to the rise of the home worker and telecommuter. The more data we have and the more mobile we are, the more critical solid backups become.

The Two Perceptions of Online Backups

Increasingly, there are two paths users are taking for online backups. The first is ensuring that the data they use every day is available to them wherever they are—hence, services such as Gmail for email, del.icio.us for online bookmarks, and Flickr for files. The second method is ensuring that data is truly backed up in case of a disaster. We expect to see more highly focused online backup solutions, particularly for enterprises (AD/Exchange backups, for example), and we will continue to see online backup companies offering more and more services to businesses (with in-office caching and single-point streaming).

Examining the Players

Let’s consider a variety of software in each of the two camps: "keep my data mobile" and "keep it backed up".

Mobile Data

First, ways to access anything anywhere.

Flickr

One of "Web 2.0"s glory stories, Flickr was a small company that set out to make uploading, categorizing, and sharing photos incredibly easy. It succeeded so well that Yahoo bought it out a couple of years ago for gobs of money. Thankfully, Flickr remains one of the fastest, easiest, and simplest ways of storing your photos online. Its professional account allows you to use up to 2GB of storage, but there is no reason you can’t start with the basic account and upgrade at a later date if you need to.

Gmail

Released by Google, Gmail became a disruptive force in the Web-based email industry. Before Gmail, typical storage allotments were roughly 20MB, with a maximum attachment size of 2MB. After Gmail, storage of 2GB with maximum attachment sizes of 20MB isn’t unusual at all. Gmail’s simple user interface and no-nonsense design make it a favorite among the technical elite. Many business users shun it as their primary email platform because of lack of contacts, calendaring, and other high-end tools (though rumors continue to swirl that Google is planning to do to calendaring what it did to email). Still, the software is a great way to ensure that your email is findable wherever you are—and its search features are well beyond the current generation of Outlook’s—so finding that email message you are looking for way in the past can be incredibly easy. Many technophiles have their mail server forward all their email to Gmail automatically as a kind of email backup: if something goes wrong, they know a copy will always be available if they need it.

Plaxo

Everyone who has ever switched jobs knows the pain of losing someone’s contact information because the Outlook Contacts folder is no longer available. Contacts are one of those things that you only really miss when they’re gone. Enter Plaxo. Plaxo provides a vast array of services around contacts. Its core service, though, is syncing with your Outlook or Outlook Express, and letting your contacts know when your details change (new job, new cell number, and so on). Plaxo is like a really smart Rolodex that’s always online and always up to date. It isn’t a networking site like LinkedIn, but it is a fantastic way of ensuring that your contacts are always available to you—whether you’re fired, you kill your laptop, or you just need someone’s information while you are away from the office.

Del.icio.us

I remember when I first found the Internet in 1993. Even back then, there were "online bookmark" services. Of course, I’m not much of a bookmark kind of guy, so I never used them, but many of my friends did. And everyone acknowledged that nobody ever really got it right. Everything was online all right, but there was never any context to a bookmark. Which is where del.icio.us (pronounced "delicious") comes in.

This little service not only lets you bookmark a page but it also lets you describe it and then tag it (for example, if the page is a recipe for pizza, you might tag it with "pizza" and "recipe"). This tagging enables you to find similar items later. The big innovation is that you can view everyone else’s bookmarks, too. So, if you are looking for more pizza recipes, you just need to expand the tag to a global one or go searching for popular pages tagged "pizza" and "recipe".

So not only can you keep your bookmarks online but your bookmarks actually become useful. They become a gateway to other information you might be interested in. And all for less than the cost of a penny.

Portable Applications

Although not technically a backup solution, an increasing number of people are looking to take not only their data but also their software applications with them. One of these types, Jon Watson likes to say he keeps his "whole life online." Sure, Jon has online storage and he uses Gmail to make sure that his email is available anywhere. But his portable applications are what make him a true mobile god.

Downloaded from PortableApps.com, Jon can fit an entire office suite (Portable OpenOffice.org), a browser (Portable FireFox), an email client (Portable Thunderbird), FTP, IM, and much more on his 500MB thumb drive. So not only does he have his data available anywhere but he also has his applications just the way he likes them—without needing to install anything on anyone’s computer.

Online Storage

And now we get to the core of the matter. Has online storage changed in the last 10 years? Has it gotten cost-effective, is it easier to use, and do the companies offer anywhere near enough storage? The short answer is a resounding "yes" to each of these questions! Let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the offerings currently available. (I’ll provide you with a list of other options at the end of the article if these do not meet your personal or business needs.)

Carbonite

David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, is concerned about your data. "Only 2–3% of desktops are currently getting backed up", he says. When asked why, he cites the simple pain of current backup solutions. "It’s just one of those things you put off until tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow. Until the day your kid pours coffee on your laptop or something."

Carbonite’s solution is a simple one: make sure that all your data is backed up, constantly being updated as you update files, and for it to cost you less than a moustache, never mind an arm and a leg. Although Carbonite’s solution isn’t out of beta testing yet, it is already gaining serious traction because, as David Friend says, "Backups need to be as simple as antivirus. When you install antivirus, you just forget about it until something goes wrong. Backups should be the same way."

Indeed. In addition to being a behind-the-scenes type of backup solution, Carbonite also employs a high level of encryption. This isn’t about data sharing. This is about disaster recovery. That when things go seriously wrong, you don’t worry about losing your data.

Allmydata

Allmydata is one of the most interesting online storage providers. Unlike other providers that went about building massive storage facilities, Allmydata decided to use the "extra" storage of the entire Internet to its advantage. The first version of its product allowed anyone in the world to, according to CEO Fabrice Grinda, get "huge amounts of free storage at their fingertips." How? Simple: if you wanted 1GB of free online storage, you only had to give Allmydata 10GB of storage on your PC.

With today’s mushrooming home storage sizes (150GB HDDs aren’t at all unusual), this became very attractive.

Using its network of thousands of PCs with multiple terabytes of storage now available to them, Allmydata then launched a paid service. But instead of uploading to its servers, Allmydata encrypts your bits and stores them (redundantly) on thousands of different computers.

According to Grinda, this means that "Not only is your data redundant, and not only can nobody (including us) view your files, but because it is distributed across the Internet, when you need a file back it comes back incredibly fast." This is due entirely to the distributed nature of the application: your bits come from whichever node is online and closest to you instead of just from the centralized servers.

Allmydata is also about to unveil new pricing plans of up to 1TB of storage for as low as $9.99 per month. The software lets you select which files or directories to back up (Grinda suggested "Documents and Settings" would be a good one to start with, or just My Documents), and then sends the files into "the cloud" in the background—staying out of the way while you work.

Openomy

Openomy is certainly one of the most unique online storage applications to come out since the bubble burst. Instead of being a storage system for users, it is a storage system for applications. Why, you might ask? Well, according to Ian Sefferman, co-founder of Openomy, it’s because "the more we move services online, the harder our data gets to reach, which is the opposite of the idea of being able to reach our data anytime anywhere."

In many ways, this is true. If you use services such as Flickr, Gmail, del.icio.us, or others, your data is available only via those services. As Sefferman says, "You don’t really own your data when you use these services."

Openomy, then, is an online file system. A user has a profile. Any data that any application that’s tied into Openomy creates or manages is then available to that user. It’s a little bit like "Windows—Online". Developers can work with Openomy’s open APIs to create anything from an online office suite to a Web browser. The data then gets stored on Openomy’s servers, so the user can have access to it from anywhere and so the user owns the data.

Openomy is currently free for the first GB of data, and the team is planning a set of subscription services to add more storage capacity to the mix. At the end of the day, it will likely live or die based on the quality of applications that get built for the system. As with most of the companies we’ve looked at in this piece, it’s an innovative and incredibly interesting approach.

What Works Well

In the grand scheme of things, I am a huge fan of making sure that the data you need is always available as well as ensuring that if something goes disastrously wrong you have backups should you need them.

As a result, I use Gmail for my email backups, Flickr for my photo backups, and LinkedIn for my contacts (because of the networking capabilities).

In terms of the online backup solutions in this article, each is rather unique. Allmydata is an interesting approach, but you might not (personally) be comfortable storing your data on someone else’s computer. Even if it’s only a few bytes, and even if it’s encrypted. On the other hand, Carbonite might not be the ideal solution for you because you might want to back up only specific sections of your hard drive.

Ultimately, all the solutions in this article offer free starter packs. Try them out and see what works best for you. And keep your eye on the storage market because new players are coming out all the time, and existing players are adding services at an astounding rate.

The Future of Online Backups

The biggest thing missing right now from online backups is a really solid business solution. There are a few companies that cater to businesses, but the solutions are still a little rough around the edges. What is needed is a box you can stick at the edge of your network, which pulls all the files down, encrypts them, and then streams them offsite. This local server would effectively be a local backup of all the files and would act as a cache between your office and the offsite team.

Several companies in the industry are heading down this path, but it won’t be until the end of the year (at the earliest) until they are ready for primetime. In the meantime, online backups will continue to increase in storage capacity, network speeds will continue to increase, and the quality of services will only go up.

I highly recommend finding a solution now that will protect you and being aware of the market so you can find the ideal solution when it finally comes out.

Other Online Backup Solutions

The following are some great online backup solutions that we simply didn’t have the space to review. Some of them, such as X-Drive, are highly focused. Others are more business-oriented. Hopefully between the reviews and these stragglers, you can find the right backup product for you.

• Xdrive
• Omnidrive
• Streamload
• Connected

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