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That's not a bad price. But in real world situation, if you have a good upload, how long would it take to do the initial upload of say 500GB?

I've read that it could take months or years for large backups to complete because they throttle each user at a very low rate.


That's not a very big upload, it'll take a couple of days. After that, it is all in the background and seamless.
 
That's not a very big upload, it'll take a couple of days. After that, it is all in the background and seamless.

I see, a couple days isn't bad at all.

I read an article from July 2013 about online backups and this is what was said about Carbonite:

When she contacted Carbonite support, she was told that the upload speed of her broadband Internet service was irrelevant. Carbonite transfers data at a maximum rate of 2Mbps–or about 22GB per day–for the first 200GB. After that point, Carbonite throttles the data upload to 1GB per day.

I thought this sounded incredible, so I reached out to Carbonite myself. A Carbonite spokesperson confirmed the bandwidth throttling, and sent me a link to where it is clearly spelled out in the Carbonite customer knowledge base. Carbonite claims that average users actually only achieve upload speeds of 3GB to 4GB per day for the first 200GB.

But if people who have used Backblaze say it's not like that with them, then I have nothing to worry about.
 
CCC sounds like a savior if the internal drive crashes. Can you boot from a cloned USB 3 drive or does it have to be connected to the Thunderbolt port or with a firewire drive with a Thunderbolt adaptor? (I have a new rImac)

You can boot from a cloned USB drive. Tested and approved. ;)
 
That's not a bad price. But in real world situation, if you have a good upload, how long would it take to do the initial upload of say 500GB?

I've read that it could take months or years for large backups to complete because they throttle each user at a very low rate.
I figured it was Time Warner doing the throttling. Anyway, I had about 500GB also; it took almost five weeks to get it done at Backblaze. That seems like a long time but you'll only do it once. Updates are incremental and you'll never see them happen unless you're looking. I don't think there's an alternative if you want a solid, reliable, hands-free, offsite backup — unless you do network engineering during the day.
 
I figured it was Time Warner doing the throttling. Anyway, I had about 500GB also; it took almost five weeks to get it done at Backblaze. That seems like a long time but you'll only do it once. Updates are incremental and you'll never see them happen unless you're looking. I don't think there's an alternative if you want a solid, reliable, hands-free, offsite backup — unless you do network engineering during the day.

That's about 14GB/day, that may be your ISP's upload limiting you.
 
Is it possible do Time Machine and CCC backups to the same external drive?

AFAIK, Time Machine just puts a single directory on the external drive, everything it needs is inside of that directory. You should be able to put whatever else you want on the drive.
 
I just downloaded the 30-day trial, I guess I'll know shortly.

I installed CCC and cloned my drive to my Time Machine drive, then I booted from the cloned backup, all looked good. Then I rebooted to my hard drive and deleted a couple of files on my desktop, restored one from TM and the other from the CCC backup. I'll be buying CCC.
 
Is it possible do Time Machine and CCC backups to the same external drive?
Absolutely, although it's not a great idea to have both local backups on the same drive. A USB drive is a marvelous piece of equipment, until it dies. And they all die some day, even LaCie.

If cost is an issue, get two cheap drives. You'll sleep better.
 
That's not a bad price. But in real world situation, if you have a good upload, how long would it take to do the initial upload of say 500GB?...

If you only have 500GB that is small. Several users already posted they have 4TB drives. I have the fastest available broadband in my area, Comcast Xtreme 105, which has an upload rate of about 20 megabits/sec. At that rate it would take 55 hours to upload 500GB.

However Comcast has a 300GB per month data cap so it would take parts of two months.

For 4TB upload would take 18.5 days if there was no data cap. With the data cap it it would take over a year. Likewise a full restore would take over a year.

Even if you could upload everything you must evaluate how long a full recovery would take, vs a locally attached drive. If it takes several days you could drive somewhere, retrieve an off-site backup and load it much faster.

I'm not saying cloud backup has no purpose but you must evaluate the real time required to backup, to do a full restore, the business cost of this time and whether any ISP data caps are in effect.
 
If you only have 500GB that is small. Several users already posted they have 4TB drives. I have the fastest available broadband in my area, Comcast Xtreme 105, which has an upload rate of about 20 megabits/sec. At that rate it would take 55 hours to upload 500GB.

However Comcast has a 300GB per month data cap so it would take parts of two months.

For 4TB upload would take 18.5 days if there was no data cap. With the data cap it it would take over a year. Likewise a full restore would take over a year.

Even if you could upload everything you must evaluate how long a full recovery would take, vs a locally attached drive. If it takes several days you could drive somewhere, retrieve an off-site backup and load it much faster.

I'm not saying cloud backup has no purpose but you must evaluate the real time required to backup, to do a full restore, the business cost of this time and whether any ISP data caps are in effect.

I have Comcast Extreme and I do not have a data cap. I have recently moved more than 500GB without a hiccup or warning. Unfortunately, Comcast, being Comcast, appears to have different plans for different markets. I take for granted that what I am offered is offered to everyone.

http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-what-are-the-different-plans-launching
 
Missing the point

If you only have 500GB that is small. Several users already posted they have 4TB drives. I have the fastest available broadband in my area, Comcast Xtreme 105, which has an upload rate of about 20 megabits/sec. At that rate it would take 55 hours to upload 500GB.

Even if you could upload everything you must evaluate how long a full recovery would take, vs a locally attached drive. If it takes several days you could drive somewhere, retrieve an off-site backup and load it much faster.

I'm not saying cloud backup has no purpose but you must evaluate the real time required to backup, to do a full restore, the business cost of this time and whether any ISP data caps are in effect.

I think you've missed the point of cloud backup. If your internal HDD or SSD dies, your local backups like CCC and TimeMachine, will get you back up and running in short order.

Cloud backups, on the other hand, are for disaster recovery. By disaster, most of us mean fire, flood, theft, earthquake, hurricane, tornado, or whatever natural or manmade disaster has destroyed your local data and all your local backups. Sometimes bad stuff happens, right? If you don't believe that, watch the news.

It really doesn't matter how long it takes for the initial upload to the cloud, that period of time is irrelevant. It will be what it will be, and it won't adversely effect your up/down speeds for whatever else you're doing. What matters is that you have your important data safe when Mother Nature, or the thief in the night, comes calling.

That's the point of cloud backup. It's your data. You decide what it's worth to you.
 
I have seen a cloud backup plan (may have been CrashPlan) where you can have them send you a disk drive on which you put your initial backup load, then ship it back to them where they put it on the server. Then, you do the incremental uploads as desired.

In the event of a disaster, they will pull your backup off of the servers to a disk drive and overnight it to you.

Of course, there is a extra charge for this service. :)
 
It really doesn't matter how long it takes for the initial upload to the cloud, that period of time is irrelevant. It will be what it will be

I disagree, it's more certainly relevant. I started this tangent conversation and it's based off of an article I read and quoted an excerpt in an earlier post. The point is that a large initial backup could take months if not a year+.

You need to pay very good attention to the backup service's policy and real-world upload speeds because the period of time it takes for the initial upload is very, very relevant.
 
I disagree

Good. If we all agreed we'd never learn anything.

Almost two years ago it took me 3 1/2 weeks to upload all my data to Crashplan. I don't remember a number but it was certainly above 300GB. A couple of months ago I decided I'd rather do business with Backblaze (Crashplan is a great service, this is just personal preference). It took around five weeks to upload about 500GB (more RAW photos accounted for the increase).

If you have multiple terabytes of data to upload to a cloud storage service it could take quite awhile. Only you can decide whether your data is worth the time to upload, or not.
 
Good. If we all agreed we'd never learn anything.

Almost two years ago it took me 3 1/2 weeks to upload all my data to Crashplan. I don't remember a number but it was certainly above 300GB. A couple of months ago I decided I'd rather do business with Backblaze (Crashplan is a great service, this is just personal preference). It took around five weeks to upload about 500GB (more RAW photos accounted for the increase).

If you have multiple terabytes of data to upload to a cloud storage service it could take quite awhile. Only you can decide whether your data is worth the time to upload, or not.
You're being argumentative but you haven't refuted the fact that the length of the initial upload is a very relevant issue. Unlike what you said, it definitely "matters" and needs to be taken into consideration when choosing a backup plan.
 
You're being argumentative but you haven't refuted the fact that the length of the initial upload is a very relevant issue. Unlike what you said, it definitely "matters" and needs to be taken into consideration when choosing a backup plan.

Really? If the initial upload gives you heartburn don't do it. Find something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Somewhere upthread I said some may have a solution that better meets their needs. If something else fits your situation, go for it.

The fact is that cloud backups take time and that factor will put some off. If you would rather not deal with upload times do something else. Let us know what you've come up with because it may work for others. Hell, I might even switch.
 
Really? If the initial upload gives you heartburn don't do it. Find something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Somewhere upthread I said some may have a solution that better meets their needs. If something else fits your situation, go for it.

The fact is that cloud backups take time and that factor will put some off. If you would rather not deal with upload times do something else. Let us know what you've come up with because it may work for others. Hell, I might even switch.

It has nothing to do with heartburn. Quit being childish.

As I've pointing out for the third time, it could take months if not a year to complete initial uploads with some services. When someone is trying to find a backup solution, looking into that issue is extremely important. You were out of line when you said that the initial upload time doesn't matter and is irrelevant, and now you are just posting for the sake of arguing.
 
It has nothing to do with heartburn. Quit being childish.

As I've pointing out for the third time, it could take months if not a year to complete initial uploads with some services. When someone is trying to find a backup solution, looking into that issue is extremely important. You were out of line when you said that the initial upload time doesn't matter and is irrelevant, and now you are just posting for the sake of arguing.

All you've said is initial upload time may be an important concern for some people. I have not disagreed with that. The OP asked about backup strategies; I posted mine. You showed up somewhere in the middle of page two and have yet to share your wisdom on the subject. That's OK, you don't have to tell anyone what works for YOU. You're entitled to argue about a mythological user who has several PETABYTES of data that will take years and years to upload. Just please, don't drag me into your fantasies.
 
All you've said is initial upload time may be an important concern for some people. I have not disagreed with that.

Wrong, you did disagree with it. You said, and I quote:

"It really doesn't matter how long it takes for the initial upload to the cloud, that period of time is irrelevant."

How long it takes for the initial upload to the cloud does matter and the period of time is extremely relevant, as I pointed out for the fourth time now.

Have you been drinking?

mythological user who has several PETABYTES of data that will take years and years to upload
If you actually read the excerpt that I quoted from one of the most well-known cloud backup services available, you would see that merely 700 GB could take two years or longer to upload. But why should we let facts get in the way of your ignorant assertions?
 
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