Tech.Carbonite back up service. Good?

Subject: Tech.Carbonite back up service. Good?
From: GUEST,bernieandred
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 01:27 PM

I'm seriously considering using this online file back up service. It costs less than $5 month for unlimited back up. Seems like a small price to pay for peace of mind. I have thousands of mp3's which I would hate to lose, but probably more importantly, set lists, lyrics, contacts, midi files, promo photo's, etc.
Anybody already using this service?

Subject: RE: Tech.Carbonite back up service. Good?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 05:36 PM

I don't know anything much about specific such services but one of the concerns is that when a "server farm" goes down, there often are hundreds (or more) users demanding recovery. You have no way of knowing whether your treasures will have priority relative to all the others. In such cases, there's often some "acceptable loss" and the bigger guys (with the premium contracts) might lose the least.

No backup is worth much without a regular and systematic way of keeping the stored information up to date. Some systems require you to log in and do the updates manually, which doesn't relieve you of much burden. Others provide "automatic" backup, but those require hookups, server traffic, and allowing access to your machine by others who aren't really members of your family. Servers, and transmissions, can be hacked or intercepted about as easily as individual machines in many cases, and "big" doesn't necessarily mean more secure.

Regardless of your plans when you set up a backup system, it eventually will end up including information that you likely wouldn't want made "indiscriminately public."

A 1T portable USB hard drive is around $120 (US) now and gives you complete control of your archive, and can go with you if you leave home in a hurry. (1T external desktop HDs are cheaper, but won't survive much moving around, regardless of how careful you are.)

No recommendations. Just some things to consider.

John

Subject: RE: Tech.Carbonite back up service. Good?
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 05:57 AM

having multiple backup methods is better. Portable HDD as well as back-up services.

CD/DVD are not that good longterm, they need regular copies say 2 or 3 years but you may be accessing them regularly and they are portable. You can write on them, highlighting the retrieval methodology as equally important. It is all data until you get at it, then it is information.

If you are about to archive it is a good time to stop and consider the layout of the archive. Do you have a database with plenty of TAGs for cross reference etc? Checksums (in the database) on the files to indicate integrity? If the checksum disagrees with the file - there is an error in the file (or the storage of the checksum even).

Checksum generation is a trivial job in Excel to write the macro. I did it for spotting files that have changed so that I only upload those that change to my website - made it a quicker online process.