New Backup Strategy

[stockcerts]

I've been using Time Machine for several years and I feel good about have current backups. Recently I've given some thought to this approach as the end all solution. What happens if someone breaks into my place and steels my Mac and USB drive, or if there is a fire? My backups are gone!

I decided to supplement my backups with off site storage. I've just started using Backblaze. So far it seems good and I've read good reviews. The first two weeks are free, then $5- a month.

Just thought I'd throw this out there to see what others are doing for peace of mind that they have a solid back-up solution.

 

[Weaselboy]

I am using the app Arq to backup to Amazon's S3 servers. If you don't have a lot of data it can be much cheaper than services like BackBlaze and Crahsplan.

My cloud backups to S3 are costing me about 75 cents a month for 25GB of data.

 

[McGiord]

How fast is that service? I mean when the back up is performed? How big are your drives?

 

[Weaselboy]

How fast is that service? I mean when the back up is performed? How big are your drives?

I have 30/5 Mbps Internet service, and unlike when I had Crashplan, I am able to fully saturate that connection in both directions to the Amazon S3 servers.

I have a 128GB drive, but I only backup the Users folder which is 25GB of data.

S3 charges three cents per month per GB, so you can see how for small data sets it is much cheaper than the alternatives services I mentioned.

If it is archival data like old videos and such you don't need immediate restore access to, you can also use Amazon Glacier storage for one penny per GB per month. The Arq app let's you pick which service you want to use.

If you have a really small amount of data, you can use Arq to backup to your free Google Drive 15GB of storage.

 

[stockcerts]

I'll look into S3, don't know anything about it. One nice thing about Backblaze is they automatically back up any connected USB drive.

 

[stockcerts]

I checked out S3 and it states it's for business use. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong page (but) I don't think so. The nice thing about BackBlaze is you download an app, and off it goes. It locates all your data and there is nothing more to do. I'm on my free 15 day trial, so it's not too late to change if I find a better solution.

Any further input is appreciated.

 

[Weaselboy]

I checked out S3 and it states it's for business use. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong page (but) I don't think so.

I don't know where you are reading S3 is only for business use. It is Internet storage on Amazon servers... that's it. Anybody can sign up for it. You can read the FAQ here. You just click to sign up and you have an AWS (Amazon Web Services) account and you are done.

There is a step by step tutorial here that shows how to setup S3 and Arq together.