There has been an explosion in the number of remote backup services recently. I figured I'd get a list together of some of the more interesting ones I've seen recently.

• 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.

It's sad to hear it after hearing good things about the company, but it looks like Carbonite has faked five star reviews on Amazon.com. This doesn't mean their product is bad, but a lot of what goes into selecting a remote backup solution is whether you can trust the company or not. If this is how they promote their product, I'd feel a lot less secure about how they run their company.

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.

I had a great time at the Office Space Coworking event yesterday and I may have learned more than those in the audience! Some key points:

• Carbonite rocks. I've only ever used JungleDisk for remote backups, but I got to see Carbonite for the first time yesterday. It looks like a wonderfully easy to use system and is only $50 a year. I think this is probably the way to go for any Windows users that don't want to mess with complicated software set up. I'll post a review soon.
• I can be a little too high level sometimes. It's hard for me to see this sometimes, but doing these kinds of presentations really helps me stay grounded.
• People still have problems with passwords. Considering the vast number of web sites and applications we use, most people probably have upwards of 50 to 200 passwords to remember. The easiest way to get around that is just to use the same password, which is very bad! I think password hashing could help out a lot of people, but it's not that easy to use yet. www.pwdhash.com is probably the easiest to use implementation of password hashing so far.
• I've already been invited back to give this talk again and one on data security. It was also suggested that I give a talk on Computers 101 that covers the basic basics on how computers and operating systems work. I think that's a great idea and it will really force me to understand how to explain this stuff to someone without a computer science degree.
• Backing up applications is a complicated topic. I think I need to put more thought into this and figure out what the best way is to backup applications. I don't think there will be one answer that fits everyone, but there could be some clarification around the issue of what and how to backup.

I want to thank everyone that came out and thanks to Kelly Brown for letting me do this. The roads were bad and it's nice to know that people will risk their lives to see your presentation. I hope it was worth it!

If you're like most people, you have an online email account, either GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. You might trust Google or Yahoo not to lose your emails, but you just never know what's going to happen. I'd rather be safe than sorry, so I went about figuring out how to backup my GMail account to my local computer.

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.

For anyone in the Akron, OH area, I'll be giving a talk at Office Space Coworking on setting up your backup for your computer. It's going to be geared toward entrepreneurs that live off of their computers, and therefore need backups of their data more than anyone. No data, no work, no salary.

It'll be a talk, but also a step by step guide on how to set up a backup tailored to your needs. Bring your laptop so you can follow along. It's called Data Backup and Recovery 101: Disaster Recovery Made Simple. If you want help or guidance setting up your backups, come on down and we'll get all set up.