Backing up digital data

[setho]

One thing that all of us who deal with digital data have to deal with is backup and file synchronization.

There are numerous ways of backing up data locally. In the Windows world there are packages like Acronis. Apple has the great Time Machine backup built into OSX.

There are a variety of cloud services, like DropBox, Box, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, BackBlaze, CrashPlan, etc.

Most offer some free amount of cloud storage to sync with. If you're anything like me, you may use them begrudgingly, not liking your data being controlled by someone else.

I came across a new product in beta right now call BitTorrent Sync - http://getsync.com/

You can load the agent on your systems (including Android and iPhone clients) and sync amongst your systems easily. Using standard torrent trackers or direct connections, it makes syncing directories between systems easy....

Most importantly, it allows you to maintain control.

You can easily backup your laptop to your desktop. Or family computers anywhere to each other. Or provide storage for friends and vice versa.

The only downside I see is that they don't have encryption as part of the client service, so you want to make sure that you really trust the systems you're backing to and from.

Since its a sync product, if you delete something, it deletes on the far end too. But it's great for catastrophic failure, or just making sure you have your data in multiple places easily.

I see this as a real game changer.......

[tpdorsey]

As a general rule, if you value your data at all, I recommend multiple layers of backup.

Time Machine is in my experience quite reliable and offers a level of useful versioning as well. Something like this or Windows Backup should be a first line of defense. Time Machine in Mavericks allows rotating backup drives so you can have redundant Time Machines.

Dropbox is great, too, but can become expensive for digital photo amounts of backup. But for day-to-day work the free service level is compelling. I rely on it.

I do a weekly SuperDuper clone to a separate drive from my Time Machine backup drive.

I use CrashPlan to create an offsite backup. There are other services as well and I think they all do a pretty good job. Once upon a time, when I worked in an office building, I cobbled together a home-brew offsite sync to a spare USB disk hanging off my work computer using Foldershare/Windows Live Sync/Mesh or whatever it's called these days. I know CrashPlan offers a family plan level of service that gives you cloud backup from several different computers at reduced cost. You can also do computer-to-computer backup over the interwebs...

The local backups are important to combat against hardware or software failure. Be sure to run Disk Utility regularly to check for and fix data corruption. Garbage in, garbage out. But offsite backups are equally important to guard against fire, theft, etc.

I personally do not worry about data security with the well-known offsite services. If it's a concern, you can encrypt your data. Secure passwords are more important. I recommend using a program like 1Password to keep track of your login data and create unique passwords when needed. 1Password will also help you know which services you've used the same password on, and you should definitely fix that. There's no excuse for using the same password everywhere.

Hard disks are cheap. There's little reason to skimp on backups, though I will admit getting it all set up can be a drag. Generally speaking it's a set it and forget it task, though. An added upside of having good Time Machine backups and SuperDuper (or equivalent) disk clones is the speed at which you can get back to work if a computer fails. In a pinch you can boot up from a SuperDuper clone and be working immediately.

Now, keeping data organized is a completely different matter and something I'm useless at.

[tpdorsey]

PS: pluggable disk docking stations like this are genius for backup drives. You can swap in 2.5", 3.5" or even SSD drives... whatever you need, whatever you have lying around.

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Docki.../dp/B003UI62AG

Also, if cloud data security is a concern, it's possible to create your own backup in Amazon's cloud. Arq is one option: http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/

Research the costs and management tradeoffs before diving in. I had originally intended to go the Arq/AWS route until I calculated the actual costs involved. YMMV.