With all the hullabaloo about Carbonite recently, I've been thinking about the value of trust when it comes to data backup and data protection companies.

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.

There's a new version of JungleDisk out now. My favorite new features are:

• Automatic Updates
• Backup of in-use files in Vista (always a pain when you can't do that)
• Ability to backup multiple users on same computer (was only single user before)

As always, it's a free upgrade for anyone that has already bought JungleDisk. Go get it now.

3:38 - And I'm back up and running! Everything's looking good, but I learned a lot about my set up and what's needed to make it easier to recover. I'll be writing about that, though, in a future post.

3:23 - That install took a while. I think I need to prune my list of applications. Things are looking good except for some permissions problems on the files.

11:53 - Recovering from the Drobo nicely. Looks like I've got a list of things to add to the JungleDisk backup.

11:17 - I don't think I'm storing enough of my settings on JungleDisk. Nothing's working quite the way I had it working before. I know the Drobo has it all, but that's really not good enough in a real recovery situation. Finishing up some final updates from Ubuntu.

11:06 - Pulling files fine from JungleDisk. It looks like everything worked as I hoped! Going to restart and get the rest from the Drobo since I don't really want a massive Amazon S3 bill.

10:52 - Getting near the two hour mark, most of it spent reading Anathem. Now on to recovering user settings and restarting the computer.

10:25 - Should have looked up before hand how to install a large number of packages in Ubuntu. Updated my repositories from JungleDisk and now install my old system. Says it'll take another 30 minutes or so.

9:57 - Just went on a wild goose chase with TrueCrypt when trying to install it. You need dmsetup installed first on Linux and I thought I had to install from source. No, just apt-get update first. Now to install JungleDisk. Note: I haven't touched my local backups yet.

9:35 - Actually, no. I need to get JungleDisk up first to restore my repository list, so first I need to get my encrypted passwords off of Dropbox and then install TrueCrypt.

9:32 - Base OS install is done. Now to install all my software.

9:16 - Partition tables! Good question. That's one thing I didn't write down before starting. I guess I'll just take the defaults.

9:11 - It has no idea what to make of the drive. Yippie! I've lost all my data! Now to install Ubuntu from the CD. Should take about 30 to 45 minutes.

9:08 - It's in. Let's see if it actually works.

9:00 - Computer shutting down. Getting ready to swap the hard drive.

8:37 - My last JungleDisk backup ran at 9 last night and I did a Drobo backup around 5 yesterday. That should cover everything I need for this morning.

8:32 - Getting ready to start. Got my tea and my Ubuntu CD, what more do I need?

The backup recovery test will start Dec. 13th at 9:00AM. Will it be exciting enough for a live blog? I have no idea.

I'm going to attempt to recover my computer on Dec. 13th from a full (simulated) hard drive meltdown. In preparation, I've developed a plan as to how I'll recover everything from my local and remote backups. I could do everything from the local backup, but I want to make sure the remote backup is working too. So here's my current recovery strategy.

Local Backup

As I've stated many times before, I use a Drobo for my local backups. I backup everything in my local user directory, where all my documents and user settings files are stored, and some applications that I've had to install myself. I plan on not using this right away when I recover, to prove to myself that I can get back on my feet with just my remote backups.

Secure Key Backup

I have a local memory card in a fire-proof lock box that's encrypted via TrueCrypt and has most of my passwords on it, including what I need to access my remote backup, JungleDisk.

First Remote Backup

The first thing I'll need to recover are files off of Dropbox. I have my TrueCrypt volume with all of my passwords on Dropbox as a redundant backup of my local encrypted memory card and I'll need those to get at my JungleDisk passwords. This should be simple using Dropbox's web interface, which will give me access to everything on my Dropbox without having to install the software right away.

Second Remote Backup

My main remote backup is JungleDisk. Once I get my passwords from the TrueCrypt volume, I'll be able to install and start JungleDisk to get my files back in order. After that, it should be smooth sailing (I hope).

Why?

The main reason I have it all set up this way is redundancy. I want local backups that are easy to access and with less hoops to jump through to get them working, but I also need remote backups because local backups won't cover me in case of a fire or other natural disaster (like a spilt can of pop!)

The key is, I need to be able to access everything from remote backups because I might not have anything local to recover with. I have my passwords locally in a lock box, but also strongly encrypted on Dropbox so that I can get them if the lock box is gone. (They're also on the Drobo and JungleDisk, because I really don't want to lose my passwords.)

Any plan you create should allow you to recover a new computer back to your current computer's working state even if you don't have access to your local work area. In fact, I would say that a remote backup is way more important than a local backup because with a remote backup, you should be able to recover from anywhere. A local backup is really just for convenience and speed, not to be depended upon for the really important stuff.

So that's my plan. What's yours?