I just found this free online backup service, Mozy (via Lifehacker) and thought I would pass it along. I know most people don’t think about backups, and this is a pretty cool way to automatically backup stuff online (or “off site”). You get 2GB free, and an unlimited account is only $5/month. Mac & PC supported.
Ideally this would be only part of a backup schedule, but it’s better than nothing, and it works automatically once you set things up. Personally, I backup my important files to an external hard drive every morning with Mac backup software Lifeboat that does this automatically, and additionally - on another external hard drive - also do what is called a “clone” of the system hard drive every week using Mac clone backup software SuperDuper! which allows me to duplicate my system drive and boot up from it in case the main drive breaks. That allows me to be back up and running pronto, with the exact same setup I use every day. There’s lots of great backup resources over at Lifehacker as well.
The online/off-site method is another level of insurance, since your files are backed up in another physical location. At the least though, it’s a great way for basic backups for most users. It’s mainly designed for personal files - documents, photos, music, art, etc. - basically non-system files. And the 2GB limit should be more than enough for most computer users.
It does take a while to do the initial backup uploading (even fast internet connections have far slower upload speeds), but once the initial backup is completed, subsequent backups only upload what’s changed. Be sure to read around on the Mozy support pages as well.
The backup software is really easy to use (I can only vouch for the Mac version) and it even gives you a default suggestion list of folders to back up: address book database, calendar, photos, music, email, etcetera. The Mac version is currently in beta (testing), so I am sure the PC version has all of this and more.
All these redundant, multiple backups may sound a bit paranoid, but if you have ever had a hard drive die on you (like I did once) you never want to go through that again. Trust me.
You can sign up at Mozy.com, or if you use this Mozy referral link, we both get another 256MB of free storage. Most likely I will be buying the unlimited package, so the referral link will be of most benefit to you. Even if you just back up some basic files, do it now. Someday you will be very glad you did.
UPDATE: I have discovered that Mac OS X users must be logged in as an administrator to use Mozy. I switched my main account to non-admin (for pananoid security reasons) and found this out. Newer versions of the sotware warn you about this, so they know and are working on a fix.
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Great post. My hard drive just burned out this week and I had to go through the process of reinstalling everything. Luckily I had most of it backed up. I wish I had a clone of the system though, didn’t think of that before. It would have been nice just to drop a disk into the computer and have it install everything.
Do you know if you can clone the system and then install that clone on other machines?
The idea behind the clone is to actually boot from the cloned drive. However, from the things I have read - which applies to Mac, but probably Windows as well - is that different computers have different configurations (laptop vs. desktop for example) that might not play well with each other, know what I mean? Drivers etc.
Since the clone does a clone of the entire drive including the system, this might not be a good idea. I clone my system drives weekly, but also do incremental backups daily for art, documents, etc. These don’t need to be cloned since the big advantage to a clone is a bootable backup.
There are utilities out there that will also duplicate a drive (which wouldn’t be bootable), and this might be an option, but again I don’t think it’s wise to move an installed system to another machine. But then again, I’m just a guy who draws funny pictures.