Does anyone here have experience of on-line backup solutions on low bandwidth (we get about 2Mb down and about 0.7Mb up)?

Carbonite looks ok -- about £40 a year for unlimited storage (we have about 20Gb of photos I'd like to store from the start and obviously we still take more), but I'm more worried about the bandwidth. I could use my free 25Gb Skydrive space, but we'd run out eventually and I would want everything automatically uploaded without manual intervention.

Herbie

EDIT : Just looked at Skydrive storage costs and they're not too bad, just need to try out the Skydrive application to see if it will do what I need.  Carbonite also adds encryption for documents anyone know how secure Skydrive storage is for encryption?

26 minutes ago, Dr Herbie wrote

EDIT : Just looked at Skydrive storage costs and they're not too bad, just need to try out the Skydrive application to see if it will do what I need.  Carbonite also adds encryption for documents anyone know how secure Skydrive storage is for encryption?

Skydrive doesn't talk about encryption in any way. I put my bank statements and tax information on it, but they're wrapped in a truecrypt volume.

I also encrypt a few folders with my financial stuff.

Herbie

Herbie

lets me view all my file types from pc and my windows phone.

Personally, I recommend Blue Ray backup per year. (ZIPPED SINGLE FILE ONLY), or can try ISO it back from blue ray. More iterative backup uses external HDD. Workspace sync using Live Mesh. Cloud storage is limited to online sharing and some documents that you want  to access online.

if you are annoyed by plugging wires, it is better to buy a dock, so you plug monitor and other things as well.

Just my thought.

Also Also prefer app-less backup.

1 hour ago, magicalclick wrote

Workspace sync using Live Mesh.

Which is of course on its last legs. Not exactly a good idea that.

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-responds-to-skydrive-privacy-concerns

Even if you are happy that every file you have complies with Microsoft's Orwellian policies, it seems like far too big a risk to take that their systems might flag something innocent (how many ordinary magazines and newpapers contain pictures with "parital nudity"?). When the punishment is losing not only use of Skydrive and whatever files you've stored there, but also your xbox live account, hotmail account and everything you've bought for WP7 if you were mad enough to buy that, it's not something I'd risk for the sake of a bit of storage. The advantage of Dropbox is if they cut you off for whatever reason, Dropbox is all you lose.

For backups I use Crashplan. It's in the same ballpark of backup services as Carbonite, but has no storage limit and the software is more flexible. You should be aware that even with a fast ADSL connection, it could take months to complete a full backup to a remote location, depending on how many files you have. The nice thing about Crashplan is that it's a full backup solution for local external harddrives and you can even back up one machine to another if you have a faster local connection so you can get a backup done quickly to give a decent piece of mind while you're waiting for the remote backup to complete. Encryption is available up to 256 bit and performed locally. You can select an option so that it never transmits the encryption key to Crashplan's servers, but you'll lose browser-based access to your archives if you select that.

WHS was close to ideal, but the wake on LAN was unreliable: it couldn't wake up my laptop and my desktop wouldn't shut down again after it had been woken. And, again: not offsite.

How do you guys let Skydrive sync your My Documents? Do you have to change some sort of registry setting that sets the path to your user profile to point inside the skydrive folder?

Give it a try, and if you like it, I will "cough cough" sort out something for you. You can get a free 5 gig month trial.

If you don't like the design blame the design agency as I did what they wanted, but the application works.

Of course, if it's just photos, then I would buy the extra space on Skydrive and simply keep them there. Add the Skydrive folder to your Pictures library and set it as the default save location.

Herbie

To break it down

1. All data is on one PC, all other PCs have access to that library using a GB Ethernet connection. When Windows 8 is out, we'll setup replicating disks on this.

2. CrashPlan+ is used to replicate #1. The cost is $3 per month for one PC, $6 per month for a household for unlimited data.

3. The most important data is also replicated to SkyDrive

4. Home Server backs up all of the machines, but it may be dying so I'm looking to switch options here for PC backup...

1 day ago, Dan wrote

@Dr Herbie: This may or may not work for you, but I use CrashPlan+ as it gives me unlimited (woohoo!) backup capacity, the only caveat is that it's only for one PC.

To break it down

1. All data is on one PC, all other PCs have access to that library using a GB Ethernet connection. When Windows 8 is out, we'll setup replicating disks on this.

2. CrashPlan+ is used to replicate #1. The cost is $3 per month for one PC, $6 per month for a household for unlimited data.

3. The most important data is also replicated to SkyDrive

4. Home Server backs up all of the machines, but it may be dying so I'm looking to switch options here for PC backup...

 

 

I started using CrashPlan+ 2 months ago, and it's awesome, but I think Dan got it wrong (or I got a different plan).  I'm backing up 4 different pcs to each other, and my main system is also backing up to crashplan's servers.  I've had to use it twice to restore, once when swapping out a hard drive for an ssd on my laptop, and last week my 1TB e drive died.  The restore was simple enough.

I got tired of screwing around with manually figuring out where and how to get my stuff on the right backup.

I still use mesh for sharing files between work and home, though, just because it's easy to use.

They key is to never make one service the silver bullet.

For me it's multiple stages of protection.

1) DropBox syncs My Documents so every system I'm on has important files at easy reach and a copy stored "In the cloud" should any system die or get stolen.

2) Manual xcopy batch files that I run once a month to copy the contents of all my computers to an external drive I keep offsite at my parents house. It's two 1.5GB usb drives that I swap with my parents each month when I visit them.

3) CrashPlan+ on every computer in the house that backs up to two locations. 1) Pushed to the CrashPlan cloud 2) Pushed to a external USB drive plugged into my dedicated home server.

As for bandwidth... I'm not pushing EVERYTHING out to the crashplan+ cloud only what I consider high priority data sets. between all my systems I have around 90GB pushed up to the crashplan+ cloud storage but almost 1.2 TB backed up locally. the biggest data set was ~60GB of digital pictures that took about 2 weeks to get uploaded on my 512kb line. 

When I write this it sounds a bit paranoid and overkill but it's not that much work to maintain and should be more than good enought to keep me from ever loosing all my data.

I'm running Hyper-V R2 on my server box and it's responsible for providing shares for my network of  server VMs and workstations. I can't install SkyDrive on any workstation or server VMs to do the synchronization with the cloud, because the SkyDrive client application can't handle UNC paths or even network shares mapped to a drive letter. So the only place I could install the SkyDrive client is on my Hyper-V server. The problem is that Hyper-V doesn't even have a real UI to run something like SkyDrive. Everything in Hyper-V server is managed through the command line.

SharePoint Workspaces have the same limitation. It's almost as if Microsoft is dissuading people from saving anything at all to a local server. They want everything to be shared via the cloud. If I were inclined to put on the tinfoil hat, it wouldn't be difficult for me to believe that Microsoft is going to eventually kill Windows Server in favor of Windows Azure.

So far though, all I've done is put the photos there... I haven't figured out the offsite backup plan, so I'm better... but not good enough yet

Aug 06, 2012 at 2:33 AM, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Skydrive doesn't talk about encryption in any way. I put my bank statements and tax information on it, but they're wrapped in a truecrypt volume.

When using a truecrypt volume, is Skydrive smart enough to transmit the chunks of it that changed or does it re-upload the entire truecrypt volume again (i.e. what if the truecrypt volume was large)?

16 minutes ago, DaveWill2 wrote

*snip*

When using a truecrypt volume, is Skydrive smart enough to transmit the chunks of it that changed or does it re-upload the entire truecrypt volume again (i.e. what if the truecrypt volume was large)?

No, it reuploads every damned time.

Aug 06, 2012 at 9:33 AM, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Skydrive doesn't talk about encryption in any way. I put my bank statements and tax information on it, but they're wrapped in a truecrypt volume.

For the record, the SDL does talk about encryption of PII data (like documents). Consequently SkyDrive will almost certainly be strongly encrypting data when sending the data to and from SkyDrive, and all data will be stored in Microsoft's hardened data-centres (i.e. you're not going to find a SQL injection against the SkyDrive website).

SkyDrive probably won't be meaningfully encrypting data once it's in the cloud (i.e. if they do encrypt it, Microsoft also has the key to decrypt it) because otherwise if all of your laptops failed you'd never be able to get at your SkyDrive data again.

Also, if you're using Microsoft Office to store your bank statements and documents, you can apply a password to it. Doing so strongly encrypts the document, so that even though SkyDrive can see your document at rest, it's at-rest form is still encrypted using your password.

4 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

For the record, the SDL does talk about encryption of PII data (like documents). Consequently SkyDrive will almost certainly be strongly encrypting data when sending the data to and from SkyDrive, and all data will be stored in Microsoft's hardened data-centres (i.e. you're not going to find a SQL injection against the SkyDrive website).

If you plumb the logs you can see it's using BITS to transfer to an HTTPS endpoint. (And muggins here is the one who has written the wrapper around the MS SSL CAs)

Also, if you're using Microsoft Office to store your bank statements and documents, you can apply a password to it. Doing so strongly encrypts the document, so that even though SkyDrive can see your document at rest, it's at-rest form is still encrypted using your password.

Office's encryption is only as strong as the password you apply. Although you can swap the algorithm out, which I didn't know.

So I pulled down a copy of what was on skydrive and mounted it.  It is the original upload.  That explains the quick 3-5 second syncs.  Now to figure out why it isn't being synced ...

3 hours ago, DaveWill2 wrote

@blowdart: Interesting.  I setup a 1 GB truecrypt AES file volume and skydrive synced it after dismounting.  It took a good while to complete as expected.  However, ever since the initial sync it only takes about 3 to 5 seconds once the dismount occurs.

So I pulled down a copy of what was on skydrive and mounted it.  It is the original upload.  That explains the quick 3-5 second syncs.  Now to figure out why it isn't being synced ...

Yea, I've been having trouble with truecrypt this week. It eventually fixed itself, but I now know who to bug when it happens again

1 hour ago, davewill wrote

@blowdart: What is interesting is the date/time of the truecrypt file on the local skydrive directory is the same date/time as when the file was originally created, even though the contents within the file have been updated almost daily since the original creation.  This completely/partially may be why skydrive doesn't think it needs to be synced.

Ah yes! You need to tell trucrypt to update the last written attribute

Settings > Preferences > Windows and uncheck "Preserve modification timestamp of file containers"

If we ever get a decent connection speed, I plan to revisit the idea.

Herbie

Herbie

15 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

@Bas: I'm just using a scheduled daily Windows 7 backup to the external HDD.  Blu-Rays will be done manually, mainly for backup of photos and video.

Herbie

Don't forget to encrypt the data on your external HDD using bitlocker or something similar. That way if someone steals your external HDD he/she will not have access to all your sensitive and confidential data.

1 day ago, Bas wrote

Also: I've got time to kill in either Delhi or Chandigarh. Anyone have any tips?

Well today's spammer clearly does

10 hours ago, donut wrote

@Dr Herbie:

*snip*

 

Don't forget to encrypt the data on your external HDD using bitlocker or something similar. That way if someone steals your external HDD he/she will not have access to all your sensitive and confidential data.

Speaking of lost data:

The suit filed by the trio of firms seeks $600 million in compensation. That's approximately $1,000 per person affected by the loss.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2013/01/22/wdr-human-resources-loans-lost-lawsuits.html

A simple solution like bitlocker seems well beyond them.

7 minutes ago, GoddersUK wrote

@Proton2: We have similar issues quite frequently here in the UK. Forget the lack of encryption, WTF are they doing storing large databases of citizen information on laptops/portable hard drives/DVDs/USB drives? They're retards for not encrypting it, but they're double, mega, triple, big fat stupid retards for storing it on these media in the first place. Leave it on your servers. Yes, make an off site back up, but don't carry it round with you. Find a safe somewhere to put it in, if it's a DVD, tape etc. Or, better yet, use servers in a second data centre for your back up.

The MSM was complaining that Canada is 5 years behind the USA in getting such data onto centralized servers. I don't know if this is true or not. Nevertheless, BitLocker sure would seem to be a cheaper solution than risking all these law suits. But then we are talking about a beuraquacy. But then, Canadians have come to expect good government, at least from the federal conservatives

I have seen otherwise intelligent developers shrug and say "meh, that's what they wanted".

I have left those positions.

 Even in cases where they don't have the infrastructure saving it on laptops and other portable devices is asking for trouble. If needs must a desktop firmly locked to a secure fixing would be better...

Lucky I have backups on my external HDD ...

Herbie

8 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

Bugger it, my hard-drive died this morning!

Lucky I have backups on my external HDD ...

Herbie

My desktop C: developed a fault this week. Woohoo for drive cloning.

The only one that seems reasonable is CrashplanPro for small business, but I'm really worried about the page where you select your plan ... what it basically boils down to is "Pay $7.49/month for unlimited, or pay thousands a month if you choose a capacity." Huh? 

I think the only online backup I'm going to be doing is telling my client to get a PC at her house with enough space and just run the CrashPlan software peer to peer, and it'll only cost the hardware and Windows 7 license.

The crashplan marketing seems specifically set up to get you to buy the monthly unlimited.  You need to recognize that it will take some time to get that data out to the cloud (especially if you have hundreds of gigs), but other than that, the Plus (+) plan is just fine for most purposes.

We went with the Crashplan Pro and chose the unlimited plan, pretty much the best pricing for a single SBS server small business --- what I was confused by earlier was their "choose the best plan" selection wizard becomes stupid apparently if you specify a quantity of "1" computer. So you get an outrageous comparison of "Should I pay $35/mo for 100GB or $7/mo for unlimited? Gee."

It was not until I realized that they really don't intend for you to ever put the number "1" in that text box that it made sense as the prices make more sense when you specify multiple computers.

As far as speed of initial upload goes, I was pretty much assuming it would take a month for this client's data, but I hadn't realized at the time she upgraded her Internet to a 25Mbps upload so her 700GB of data is only going to take a few days with the amount of BW I allocated to Crashplan. That's cool as hell.

What is nice, though, is that once it all shows up, CP only does differentials and it can do them during your off hours.  If you don't throttle it and it kicks off during the day, though, you are going to be a sad surfer.