Google or Mozy?

purdue1014

purdue1014

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Brent
Hi All,

I'm looking to start doing some online backups, and am unsure as to whether Google or Mozy would be a better service to use to backup data to....Do you guys have any thoughts?

Thanks!

Brent
 
Neither. Buy a couple TB drives and RAID em.
 
purdue1014 said:
Hi All,

I'm looking to start doing some online backups, and am unsure as to whether Google or Mozy would be a better service to use to backup data to....Do you guys have any thoughts?

Thanks!

Brent
Click to expand...

I haven't used Google Backup so I can't comment on it directly. And in view of Google's recent security questions (as well as several outages over the past few days), I'm not sure that right now is the best time to test-drive it. But Google does most of what it does very well, and I have no reason to believe Backup will be an exception once Google's present growing pain issues are resolved.

As for Mozy, however, they are excellent. I have been recommending Mozy to clients long enough to have done quite a few restores, and all have gone flawlessly. They also have truly superb support. On the few occasions I've had to call them on the phone, I've never had to wait more than two or three rings to get connected to a North American-based human.

-Rich
 
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I use RAID locally to provide some protection against a disk failure. That said, RAID controllers can fail and corrupt the RAID array (google 'corrupt RAID array' - unfortunately this does happen, and it is often catastrophic to the data). Additionally, RAID doesn't protect against fire, lightning strike, and other natural disasters.

If one really has mission critical information, then I would recommend both online/offsite storage and RAID should be used.


EdFred said:
Neither. Buy a couple TB drives and RAID em.
Click to expand...
 
If the data is that important, safe deposit box on a drive, and another copy at your parent's house, and a copy at your cousin's, and a copy...
 
nyoung said:
I use RAID locally to provide some protection against a disk failure. That said, RAID controllers can fail and corrupt the RAID array (google 'corrupt RAID array' - unfortunately this does happen, and it is often catastrophic to the data). Additionally, RAID doesn't protect against fire, lightning strike, and other natural disasters.

If one really has mission critical information, then I would recommend both online/offsite storage and RAID should be used.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I use RAID, disk cloning, and online backup. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about having too many good backups.

-Rich
 
Backup has always been a chase between disc capacity and backup system capacity. Back before hard drives were common (and I do remember those days, had a computer without one) you just kept copies of the floppies in a safe place.

The 20 MByte hard drive on my XT close wasn't too bad to back up to flopppies.

The 120 MByte hard drive on my 486 machine got backed up to cartridge tapes. I still have the tapes, but the machine is long gone (as is the drive).

Larger systems and backup to CD-ROM would work. Then DVD backup. Now with 1 TByte total capacity in one machine, and who knows how many GBytes just of pictures, even DVDs are a pain. I have a RAID box that has about 750 GBytes of capacity that seemed so big when I got it. Now if I filled my desk machine I couldn't back it up on the network to that box. The arms race continues. I may have to seriously look at online backup. I'd love to put DVDs of pictures and other files in the safe deposit box, but my bank ran out of boxes wide enough. They won't fit in the box I have. :mad2: Car titles and stuff like that, no problem.
 
RJM62 said:
I haven't used Google Backup so I can't comment on it directly. And in view of Google's recent security questions (as well as several outages over the past few days), I'm not sure that right now is the best time to test-drive it. But Google does most of what it does very well, and I have no reason to believe Backup will be an exception once Google's present growing pain issues are resolved.

As for Mozy, however, they are excellent. I have been recommending Mozy to clients long enough to have done quite a few restores, and all have gone flawlessly. They also have truly superb support. On the few occasions I've had to call them on the phone, I've never had to wait more than two or three rings to get connected to a North American-based human.

-Rich
Click to expand...

Hi Guys,

Sorry for being incommunicado, I just finished up some final exams today...

I appreciate the information....I do have a question for anyone...What's RAID?

Thanks!

B

PS--Basically, my mission is getting rid of stacks of paper and unnecessary files I have laying around, scanning them into PDF, and then chucking the paper...I do have some old financial and insurance stuff, etc., so I'll look into an off site or "element proof" backup...
 
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RAID is not a backup. Period.

RAID is used to increase system availability. Nothing more.
 
jesse said:
RAID is not a backup. Period.

RAID is used to increase system availability. Nothing more.
Click to expand...

Well....it can serve as a small form of redundancy and give the ability to recover from a failure. But it shouldn't be relied upon, that's for sure.
 
SkyHog said:
Well....it can serve as a small form of redundancy and give the ability to recover from a failure. But it shouldn't be relied upon, that's for sure.
Click to expand...
It increases the availability of the server by providing some redundancy. But it is in no way shape or form something that should be considered a backup for any sort of purposes.

As far as I'm concerned, it is like having two power supplies. You do it to increases the server's availability.

You also use RAID to increase performance. It's about availability and performance.
 
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Professional CISSP here...

Jesse is 100% correct, RAID is not a backup.

If a dumb user mistake deletes or overwrites an important file, your RAID hardware (especially mirroring) ensures that all your copies of that file get deleted or overwritten ;-)

(unless you've got a real backup copy stashed away somewhere)
 
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I might add that if you have sensitive data (bank records, financial info, etc.), you may want to consider encrypting the external backup drives as well. I have not used it yet, but the free program TrueCrypt comes highly recommended, and the price is right!
 
Neal Howard said:
Professional CISSP here...

Jesse is 100% correct, RAID is not a backup.

If a dumb user mistake deletes or overwrites an important file, your RAID hardware (especially mirroring) ensures that all your copies of that file get deleted or overwritten ;-)

(unless you've got a real backup copy stashed away somewhere)
Click to expand...

Agreed. Another problem is that RAID controllers are notorious for going down in flames of glory, taking the whole array with them. Not only that, but if the array is the system drive and gets infected, you have two infected drives -- and being in a RAID array sometimes complicates cleaning them up.

-Rich
 
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