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Backblaze vs Mozy vs Carbonite vs Jungle Disk

eclipse525

eclipse525

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 5, 2003
854
4
USA, New York
Is anybody using any of these services (Backblaze vs Mozy vs Carbonite vs Jungle Disk)? How would you rate them and what are your experiences?

Although I have a pretty solid backup solution at home, the thought of an online solution is comforting. I need to back-up a little over 1 terabyte of data. I know the initial back-up will take a while, after it's uploaded it will only be incremental.

Any idea's/suggestions are welcome. Thanks!!!


~Erick
 
I've never used any of them.

It looks like Carbonite limits uploads to 100GB per month.

A comparison of Carbonite, Mozy and some others can be found here. The site has a click through discount of 15% for Carbonite and Mozy.
 
How fast is your internet connection?

What's your price range?

If your goal is simply off-site, maybe 2 external hard drives that you rotate with a neighbor.
 
Been using Backblaze for months and am very happy with it. I've got well over 100GB of data backed up with them. It works well with my external RAID array - all the data on that external array is backed up.
 
Mozy!

I have been using Mozy for both my MP and MBP for a little over a year now. Luckily for me I have never had to use the restore feature, but I have been very impressed with the services. Have over 150GB uploaded to their servers between the two computers. The first backup takes several days (or weeks), but once it uploaded, each subsequent backup only updates files that have changed.

I highly recommend Mozy and for ~$5/mo., its pretty affordable.
 
Pearl Wisdom said:
Check out http://www.macworld.com/article/142606/2009/09/online_backup.html for reviews.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the article. I actually read this before. What I got out of it was that Jungle Disk is the best but WAY too expensive if you have a lot of data. In my case, I would have an initial 1 terabyte of data and about 2-3 gigs a month. At the rate, Jungle disk would cost me about $150 a month. That's just not an option. I might as well just buy another HD and go through the hassle of swap it out at with a family and/or friends.

The best option I've seen was "CrashPlan". It seemed to beat all the other in most areas. So at the moment, I'm favoring "CrashPlan" BUT still thinking it over.

Thanks!

~Erick
 
I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd chime in with my experience. I've been using Mozy for several months (a year?) and have found the service problematic, primarily because Mozy never quite seems to know how much data it needs to back up. One minute it will be backing up a few megs, the next minute it reports that it needs to upload a couple of gigs. The final straw was this week, when Mozy reported that I had 170+ gigs that needed to be backed up. Um, what??? Seems Mozy had forgotten that I had (painfully) already uploaded all of this data and it wanted to do it all again. Combine that with an excruciatingly slow process if you happen to restart the backup and I'd had my fill. I'm now trying BackBlaze (though I still have my Mozy account until I make a decision).

BackBlaze started my backup immediately, not futzing around for an eternity like Mozy does. There does seem to be less control over selective file backup with BackBlaze, but that may be a worthwhile compromise. Of course it will take 3 weeks to get all my stuff uploaded to BackBlaze and I can evaluate the consistency of day-to-day backup. Fortunately the reasonable price of these services ($5/month) makes it practical to sit on one service while trying another.
 
Software seems weird

I had a similar experience to the poster above. The mozy software was just a little unpolished. It seemed buggy to me and there were many moment when I was unsure what it was up to, save that it was thinking about something. The backblaze screen shots seem a little more my style - similar to Time Machine. I think I will be switching in the coming month.
 
Ah, where do I begin about problems with Mozy?

Well, for one, their software, as the above poster states, is terrible. It not only takes up massive amounts of CPU processes, but also just doesn't seem to know what to upload and when.

Second, and the big issue.

So, I changed credit card numbers, and forgot to update Mozy. No big deal, I got an email from them saying the transaction was declined, due to error "". Yes, empty quotes. So, I figured it out, changed to correct number, and tried again. A few days later, I get another email, same thing. I double checked to make sure my card number was correct and the card was valid of course, and try again. A few days goes by, and I get an email saying my account has been closed due to non-payment.

Again, no big deal I figured. I thought I could just call them (yeah right, that was a joke) or email them and figure out why they couldn't bill my new card, and re-instate the account. Except that, when it did this..it put me on the free 2gb plan, DELETING OVER 150gb OF BACKUPS.

Yes, that's right. They are gone. Mozy even told me there is no way to get it back. thank goodness I didn't need the backup, but STILL!

So be very careful with them...they'll just delete your stuff if billing fails for any reason.:mad:
 
Off Site backup

One thing I have just come up against with BackBlaze and a major fail if you ask me.

When you upgraded your computer you will have to wipe your off site backup and start again from scratch. Yes you heard right, so it took 3 weeks or so to upload it all and now just because you have a new computer you are going to be left high a dry with no backup off site while you start over.

Come on thats just a joke.
 
vinnie110 said:
One thing I have just come up against with BackBlaze and a major fail if you ask me.

When you upgraded your computer you will have to wipe your off site backup and start again from scratch. Yes you heard right, so it took 3 weeks or so to upload it all and now just because you have a new computer you are going to be left high a dry with no backup off site while you start over.

Come on thats just a joke.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you were able to retrieve all the data that was uploaded via a downloaded Zip, right? You didn't "lose" anything - you just have to download your files to the new computer, then authorize your new machine for your Backblaze account. Yes, an initial backup starts all over, but geeze man - for $5 a month . . . I'll take that inconvenience over losing my files any day.
 
BackBlaze is incredibly stupid not to allow inclusions of specific directories.

For example, /applications is excluded, but I would like to include /applications/mamp (web dev files). I'd have to exclude each /applications subfolder one by one to be able to do this..
 
I have been using carbonite for a few months now, and while I generally like it, I believe it is causing my fan to go on at random a couple of times an hour, even if my computer is sitting idle. Is anyone else having fan problems with carbonite?

It could just beep that I'm running carbonite on my mid-2007 mbp, which is starting to show its age.
 
sir42 said:
I have been using carbonite for a few months now, and while I generally like it, I believe it is causing my fan to go on at random a couple of times an hour, even if my computer is sitting idle. Is anyone else having fan problems with carbonite?

It could just beep that I'm running carbonite on my mid-2007 mbp, which is starting to show its age.
Click to expand...

Yes carbonite is driving me nuts with how it sucks up the CPU when it scans for files.
 
Might not suit your needs but I've been using Dropbox for over a year now and love it. Accessing my files via the web interface from other computers come's in so handy. Never a glich with the software or any problems

I don't do photography or anything with massive file sizes so it works well for me.
 
I agree with dropbox.

I've been using carbonite for about a year now, and while I don't have any major complaints (it actually saved some critical client files for me that saved my ass), I've also been using dropbox for about 8 months and it seems like it may be a far better solution for 99% of the things I might use online backup for.

Not only will it keep your stuff secure, but if you ever need to access it, no problem - you can do it from any computer. Trying that with carbonite is pretty ridiculous.
 
Same here.. Been with Mozy for years but I won't pay more then $5 a month. I'll switch to either Carbonite or Backblaze but I dont know which one...
 
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