• Syncplicity

  Syncplicity is a lot like Dropbox, but isn't limited to just one folder on your computer. It keeps a version history and allows you to share folders with other Syncplicity users. Also like Dropbox, you get 2GB for free and another 50GB for $9.99 a month. Windows only.

• Backblaze

  Backblaze is a regular backup solution much like Mozy or JungleDisk with a couple of cool features:

  1. You can order your files on DVD or USB Drive. This is a very cool way to have a remote and local backup without having to go through the work of doing the local backup yourself.
  2. Unlimited backup size for $5 a month.
  3. Ability to set your own encryption key.

  This is definitely a company I'm watching at the moment. Works on Windows and Mac.

• HP Upline

  Even HP is getting into the act with HP Upline. It's nice to see an established company getting into the act but for a hardware manufacturer, I'm always worried that these extra services outside of their main business will be the first to go when they need to cut down on their products. The plans seem pretty standard; one computer on the backup for $59 a year. Windows only.

  UPDATE: Wow, that was quick. HP Upline goes offline. Looks like the big players don't want to be in this business.

Not only are more solutions coming in the near future, there'll be solutions from big names like Microsoft, Symantec and possibly even Google. Time will tell how this all shuffles out.

Related posts:

1. JungleDisk: Remote Backup Software My current remote backup solution is JungleDisk. Since it's one...
2. Dropbox: Remote File Syncing One of my favorite new online applications is Dropbox. Dropbox's...
3. Designing a Backup Plan Everyone needs a plan. A backup plan, that is. Everyone's...

For those who don't know, it was recently found out that Carbonite faked a number of five star reviews on Amazon.com. This set off a small firestorm of controversy over the ethics of some of the people at the company. To many, however, it was just a company trying to get a little positive publicity that backfired a little. For most, it really wasn't a mark on their main business of online, secure backup.

I happen to disagree. Online backup, and especially data security, are businesses of trust. If you feel like you can't trust a company to be honest in it's marketing, how much of their other marketing is bogus? How secure is their data center? How well does their software verify your backup data? You don't know anymore. They could really be making up anything at this point.

Ultimately, you have to take the company's word and if they're lying about one thing, how do you know they are lying about others? You're sending the most sensitive data you have over the internet to some ultimately unknown location. Trust must be an integral part of this process.

What you'd really like to do it not have to trust anyone! If you run backups, be sure to test them and see how long it takes to get your data back and that it's still in one piece. Don't take assurances that you data will be fine. Also, handle security yourself if you can. What I like about JungleDisk is that my data is encrypted before Amazon.com sees it on their servers. I don't have to worry about JungleDisk or Amazon.com being secure since I've already handled that step myself (and verified it myself too.)

There is, of course, a certain amount of trust that you must put in the company. I personally would rather trust a data center that is redundantly backed up and global (Amazon.com) than one that is only located in a small data center on the east coast (nearly every other backup service). I can also buy backup software from a company that concentrates on backup software and my data center is run by a company that concentrates on data centers. I don't have to trust them with everything and can even switch one or the other at a later time, if I need to. I'd rather be in control than have to rely on people I may not trust. I also pay by the month and am not locked into a yearly contract that I'd have to go through the hassle of canceling. If I switch to a data center other than Amazon.com, I can remove all my data from their servers and no longer pay anything for their service.

I still recommend JungleDisk for these reasons and more. It's just a better solution, even if it isn't as slick and fancy as some of the other backup services. It's a little extra work to set up, but it keeps you in control of what you're doing.

Trust me.

Related posts:

1. Carbonite’s Fake Reviews It's sad to hear it after hearing good things about...
2. JungleDisk: Remote Backup Software My current remote backup solution is JungleDisk. Since it's one...
3. My Current Recovery Strategy I'm going to attempt to recover my computer on Dec....

I've also had reservations about the fact that they only have one data center where they keep your data and don't really keep backups of that. There are many legitimate one star reviews of Carbonite that talk about users not being able to get their data back during a restore. That is completely unacceptable for a backup solution.

I want to apologize for recommending or even thinking that this is a good solution. I recommend never even looking at Carbonite as a remote backup solution.

Related posts:

1. Trust With all the hullabaloo about Carbonite recently, I've been thinking...
2. Great Event Yesterday! I had a great time at the Office Space Coworking...
3. Designing a Backup Plan Everyone needs a plan. A backup plan, that is. Everyone's...

Pop It

The key is that GMail allows access to all of your emails via the POP3 protocol, a protocol that most email programs use. If you go into GMail settings, you can allow POP3 access to your account. Be sure to select the option that allows access to everything in your account from the time it was first started.

You can now use any standard email program to pull all of your emails off of GMail, including Outlook or the free Thunderbird. Be sure to set it up to not have them delete mail off the server. You still want to keep everything in GMail, I assume, so you don't want to delete the emails off of GMail after you download them.

Now you can open up your desktop email client every once in a while and download your emails to keep a local backup of your email. You'll have to run it multiple times at first, since GMail won't give you everything at once but will instead let you download in 100 message chunks. Just keep checking your mail until it downloads your most recent messages.

Advanced

For those advanced enough to get geeky with this, there's a great way in Windows, Linux and Mac to do this automatically using Fetchmail. Lifehacker has a great write up about this, but concentrates on Windows.

To do the same on Linux or a Mac, just follow the instructions on setting up Fetchmail in the Lifehacker article, but set up a cron job by calling:

crontab -e

And adding a line like this:

0 0 * * * fetchmail -k

That will now download any new mail off of GMail every night at midnight. Instant and automated backup of your GMail account.

Note that this does backup your sent mail. This makes is wonderful complete backup of GMail.

Related posts:

1. Spam Flood of 2008 It's looks like on Jan. 6th starting at about 10:00AM...
2. How Secure is Your Email? I wonder how secure most people think email is, especially...
3. Remote Backup Roundup There has been an explosion in the number of remote...

So what lists should you make?

1. What equipment needs special set up on the new computer?

   For me, this is things like my printer and wireless internet. By having a list written out with all the steps involved and the drivers my operating system need in one place, I can quickly get these set up without having to remember every step needed along the way. If you have any special equipment that will need configured, have a step by step process of how to get it set up on a new computer.

2. What applications do I need to install?

   As I said in the application backup post, make a list of all your installed applications and locations (either web addresses or location in your backup) of where to download them. You'll also need a list of license keys written up in a text file in your remote backup. If you do have a fire, you won't be able to go back to the CD to find the key.

3. What special things do I need to do to get back to my current state?

   I have a network drive share on my laptop that I use to share video with a couple of other computers in the house. I had forgotten how involved this was to set up and so I wrote all the steps down this time and put it on Dropbox. Any complicated set up like this should be written down and stored in your remote backup so that you won't have to spend the time to figure it out again.

If this was a real recovery, and not just a planned test, I would have gotten myself in a slight panic over all the things I couldn't remember how to do. The number one reason this test took six hours was because of all the little things I just forgot about.

Now, all of these lists have gone straight into my Dropbox under a recovery folder, including any special drivers I need for my printer and scanner. Next time, I should be able to run through these lists a lot quicker to get my computer back up and running.

Related posts:

1. Recovery Post Mortum On Dec. 13th, I tested my backup system the best...
2. My Current Recovery Strategy I'm going to attempt to recover my computer on Dec....
3. Backup Recovery Live Blog 3:38 - And I'm back up and running! Everything's looking...