I thought I’d take a couple minutes to provide an update on my latest backup and recovery strategy. It’s conceptually similar to what I’ve been doing albeit more streamlined with a heftier TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Excerpt from my earlier post
Based on Mike’s response to my scenario on the Bombich support forum it seemed I was on the right track but if the Mac crashes, backing up from a separate external might be easier. Likewise, I discovered that cloud backup providers like Carbonite, Mozy, BackBlaze and the like, aren’t as impressive as they first appear because they limit external drive backup (Carbonite) and several file types and sizes. BackBlaze at this point seems to be the best fit but it’s still leaves a bit to be desired.”
- Carbon Copy Cloner is setup to do a monthly auto-clone of my Mac
- Backblaze continusly backs up the Mac & Drobo
Where I’m at today…
I’m lazy busy and tend to skip the Carbon Copy Cloner task every month. It’s a fairly manual process since I have to grab the 2nd external drive, boot it up and then let CCC do it’s thing. Maybe monthly cloning should be my new years resolution…
I’ve been satisfied with my monthly purchase of Backblaze and although I like the fact that it’ll backup the Drobo, there are limits to the file types/sizes it can handle i.e. operating system, installed software and metadata. The whole $5 per month for unlimited data within the limits Backblaze has going isn’t such a bad thing but it’s not quite as full-on as I’d like…
As an aside…
MacWorld recently published “Which online backup service is right for you?” and while it offers good feature/functionality coverage of each of the most popular products (Backblaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Jungle Disk and Mozy 2.0) they didn’t really go into much detail. They went so far as to provide a handy little rating rating system to help you decide quickly which product was “best” but failed to provide much in the way of analysis or testing.
Arq by Haystack Software
Fortunately, a couple months ago I stumbled across Arq by Haystack Software. Although I haven’t quite decided whether to use it as an add-on to my backup strategy or wholesale replacement to Backblaze, they’ve definitely provided solid answers to some of the more difficult scenarios. I wont bother going into the gory details since the do a fine job on their site but here are a few Arq features that I LOVE thus far…
- Stored on Amazon S3
- Grabs Applications & OS files
- No file size constraints
- AES-256 Encryption
Despite the added cost of backing up to Amazon S3 I’m much happier with the setup.
2 Comments
When did you post this blog? (Your blog seems oddly devoid of dates, so it’s hard to know how “current” your facts and opinions are…)
The post was updated in Jan 2011 but generally still using the same process.