Online Storage
So last Friday I decided that Amazon's S3 was the way to go so I opened up an account and started playing with a few s3 tools. I've started collecting the useful things I've found on my s3 del.icio.us tag for those who might be interested in following suit. Not something I'm looking for, but if you are simply looking to backup a Windows workstation, Jungle Disk looks like a good choice.
One thing I hadn't considered before was storing my mp3's ripped from my music collection. That's a quick 7-8GB (and growing) I hadn't considered. But to store that is still only $1.20/mo and $1.60 to upload it. I'd say that's pretty reasonable and it seems safe and secure in the long run. Thus the big upload push has begun… Next up will be figuring out how to backup/rsync my website on a regular basis.
So for some time now I've contemplated the prospect of online backup/storage. I don't have a lot of confidence in my home PC, nor do I have the time or mental fortitude to build and maintain a backup server. I simply have other things I'd rather do with my time these days. Thus I always thought that having secure remote storage would be ideal. But when I first thought about it it wasn't a viable option because of the cost and the bandwidth to shuffle things back and forth.
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This past week I read with interest Jeremy Zawodny's blog entries Replacing my home backup server with Amazon's S3 and A List of Amazon S3 Backup Tools. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) seems just like the sort of thing I'm looking for although I haven't had time to really look into some of the tools available. One thing that I wish it did have was SFTP or SCP access.
Among the comments some suggest using DreamHost to do something similar, but at a lower cost. I'm all for that and for file storage I this would probably be workable even though I'd never consider using them for web hosting…I've read too many bad things even with all the talk I hear about how wonderful they are. Thanks but no thanks. Besides, this is outside the scope of what this entry is about. It would also be nice primarily because it would be readily available via SFTP and SCP. But the real downside is that it violates their Terms of Service which states "The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Webhosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website…" so at any time they could shut your file storage down. Plus their infrastructure surely isn't as fault tolerant or distributed as Amazon's.
So at this point I'm looking at it a bit, but without any clear decisions. I know I need to do something as most of my data at home is not reliably backed up and my photo collection just keeps growing. At this point I know I would need 3-4GB right out of the gate to store all of it. I'm sort of waiting to see what else Jeremy has to say on the matter, as well as his commenter's. But if you're reading this, have some experience with online storage and have some ideas, please point me at anything you think might be useful.
Fred said:
For a more secure, efficient and reliable backups and restores of your important files and folders data, try a top site service like IBackup.
With IBackup for Windowsit’s easy to perform interactive and scheduled backup operations of your important files and folders to your online IBackup account. You can drag and drop files from your PC to back them up or to restore them. You can also make use of the automatic selection, restore and scheduler wizards to select the files or folders and then schedule the backups and restores for a time and frequency of your choice.
IBackup for Windows transfers only modified portions of files to ensure a quick backup. So there will be no huge bandwidth consumption. A very good thing about IBackup is that you can edit and save files or folders in your online account using IDrive (www.ibackup.com/IBDrive_new.htm), which maps your IBackup account as a local drive in your computer. You can instantly stream all your multimedia files with IDrive Multimedia
IDrive also allows users to directly open and save files stored in their IBackup online account from associated applications like Microsoft Office. With Web-Manager (www.ibackup.com/webmanager.htm) create folders, upload, files, rename, and share files or folders with others for collaborative access. The `Private Share’ feature in Web-Manager allows an IBackup user to instantly share data with another IBackup user. You can also create sharable links and email them to friends and partners with Web-Manager.
With IBackup for Windows you can backup open files like Outlook files (.pst) and QuickBooks. For better security and data retention, you can download and install IBackup Professional. This application’s encryption is based on a user-defined key so that the data stored on the IBackup Professional servers cannot be decrypted by anybody other than you. The backed up files are stored by default in the encrypted form using AES 256-bit encryption and automatically decrypted during restores.
Kevin said:
Well Fred, I'm happy you stopped by to shill for your company, that's cool. But $9.95 for 5GB's? I'd recommend people pass on that and do as I mentioned above, get JungleDisk (http://www.jungledisk.com) instead. That's a much better value in my opinion, but to each his own.
Neither really works for my needs and I've opted to go with jet3t (https://jets3t.dev.java.net/) for things from my WIN box and s3sync (http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=11975&start=0&tstart=0) to backup my website from the Linux box. Both are fast, reliable and meet my needs very well.
For those that can deal with something a bit more technical, these are even better choices.
-klp
Damien said:
IBackup (http://www.ibackup.com/) may not be free. But its features are much better than other services. I became their user after I tried their free trial. If I can get quality service for $9.95, why should I abandon it?
Kevin said:
Damien,
I never said you should abandon it. If you're using IBackup and you're happy with it, then continue. That's entirely your decision. It's just my opinion if someone isn't already happily using IBackup, then JungleDisk is a viable and useful option. I honestly don't know exactly what advantages if any IBackup provides over JungleDisk. To each his own. But for myself and most people I know, I think they would be quite happy with JungleDisk and $10 extra in their pocket every month. The bottom line is that Amazon s3 is a very affordable mass storage service. How you utilize it is up to you. I prefer to use and promote free (and open source --Yes, I know JungleDisk isn't) s3 utilities over commercial offerings.