Sunday, August 17. 2008

Carbonite vs Mozy vs Jungle Disk

I decided that with my daughter coming into my life, that I need to now backup all my precious pictures of her.

This is slightly easier said than done, since I'm currently clocking in around 30 GB of pictures.

Click the read more (or the article title) to read which backup solution I chose.

I looked at the Mozy service and on paper it looks great.

Free 2gb service, higher plans for more data.

Block level incremental backups(only the bits that get changed are backed up)

File Versioning

Bandwidth Throttling (important for you VoIP users)

Locked File support (Via the VSS service)

However, trolling around on the net, it seems like it's a nightmare to get access to your files in a hurry.

Then I began to compare Carbonite, and Jungle Disk. Both have compelling features, and some draw backs:

Carbonite Pros:

Unlimited flat fee storage

Block level incremental backups

File Versioning

Bandwidth Throttling

No restriction on File size

Easy install

Runs as a service, so if the computer is on, the backup runs

Unaffected by multiuser computer configuration

Select own encryption key

Carbonite Cons:

Currently only has a single data center.

Proprietary client. (No Mac support)

Jungle Disk Pros:

Multiple Datacenters (Runs on the Amazon S3 services)

File Versioning

Select own encryption key

Opensource Client

Multiple OS support (linux / Mac / Windows)

Data is stored on Amazon S3 service, so is unlikely to go out of business.

Select own encryption key

Jungle Disk Cons:

Block level incremental backups are an addition fee

So
on paper, JungleDisk wins hands down. Except for the WAF factor. (Wife
Acceptiblity Factor) Carbonite puts colored dots on files that are
being backed up. This little trick lets you know what files are backed
up. Without even telling her, my wife figured out what it meant, and
began to backup other things that were important to her. So I
subscribed to Carbonite's free trial.

I signed up, and installed
the software. It immediately began backing up my computer. I looked at
it's selection set, and it was grabbing the entire Documents and
Settings folder. Which is great because I store my 29 GB of photos in
the Shared User folder.

Here's the quick stats:
Backup Started Sunday 9pm
Backup completed Wednesday 4pm
Total backup: 29GB

But
what's a backup solution without a restore test, and besides, after
hearing about Mozy's troubles with Large restores, I wanted to know
what I was getting into. So I restored everything to an External Hard
Drive.

Restore started Sunday 8:15 pm
Restore complete
Monday at 5:15pm. However, this includes an internet outage of 10pm,
till 7am, so the total time was much shorter.

Everything hasn't been all roses with Carbonite. I've had two ongoing issues.

The floppy drive will seek randomly

Explorer.exe will crash randomly and will auto restart

Apparently both of these issues go back to those colored dots that I enjoyed. The floppy drive issue I googled, and found that another user had the same issue. A VP from carbonite posted to his blog that he's
heard of this issue, and that putting a floppy disk in the drive will
allow carbonite to see the drive, and figure out it's a floppy. Once
it does this, it will not query the drive anymore.I'm wondering if
the 2nd issue is related to the first. I have a floppy in the drive,
and plan to leave the computer on overnight.

If not, I'll submit a support ticket.

Anyways, I'm now recommending to people that ask to use Carbonite to backup they're stuff. If your going to use it, drop me a line, I'll refer you, we'll both get a free month of service.

**Update**

The two issues I've had with Carbonite went away when I migrated computers. The Computer I'd installed Carbonite on was about 5 years old, still with it's orginal 5 year old XP install. 5 Years of software trials, multiple AV and Spyware scanners.

I'm chalking the issues up to something leftover from another software install that didn't clean up from itself.

in Tech Stuff at 20:43 | 14 Comments | 1 Trackback

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Michael,
I've tried the insertion of a floppy disk. I was hopeful, because the tech support team told me it would "most likely" solve the floppy access problem. It didn't work. It's not a huge deal, but it becomes a little annoying having to wait that extra second or two, every time you open My Computer.
I'm actually using the paid version of both Carbonite and Mozy. Whichever one comes out ahead, in the long run, will be the one I stick with.

#1 Ed Coyne (Homepage) on 2009-01-12 09:25 (Reply)

I ran into the same problem. I never opened a tech support case however.

I built a new computer, running vista. It doesn't have a floppy disk, so I don't have the problem anymore.

So my suggestion, Disconnect the floppy. Do you really use it?

#1.1 Mike on 2009-01-12 11:22 (Reply)

I guess I could do that. Good idea.

Hmmm...I haven't even THOUGHT about installing either of these on my laptop. I'll have to do that, eventually.

Thanks for your suggestion.

#1.1.1 Ed Coyne (Homepage) on 2009-01-12 11:25 (Reply)

Thanks for the overview... I was trying to decide between the three services myself. I'm not sure how long ago you wrote this though. I believe carbonite now services Mac. Is that right? If you did write this awhile ago have you had any second thoughts? Any additional comments or observations? Otherwise, I would appreciate the reference and the free month.

james

#2 James Mockovciak on 2009-06-28 18:01 (Reply)

In the past couple of months, I've run into a problem with Mozy. I just can't get it to work, correctly (Mozy support can't either). Still waiting for them to refund my last two payments. I'm confident the refunds are forthcoming.

#2.1 Ed Coyne (Homepage) on 2009-06-29 09:42 (Reply)

Like I said in my article..... I've heard many horror stories about Mozy's technical support.

If you want a reference to Carbonite, I could send one along.

#2.1.1 Michael King (Homepage) on 2009-06-29 09:55 (Reply)

Nah, I've actually got it installed already. I was bouncing back and forth, between the two. I preferred Mozy, when it was working.

I don't want this to be a dig against Mozy. It could be an isolated incident, specific to my configuration, only.

#2.1.1.1 Ed Coyne (Homepage) on 2009-06-29 09:59 (Reply)

True, sometimes things do get weird on a single installation. I had the problem in my article of the floppy drive and the explorer crash. Of course, that computer had not been rebuilt in 5 or so years (yes it was that old) and had many thousands of software installs/removals. So I was willing to give Carbonite the benefit of the doubt, especially since I never followed thru with a support case.

My fresh install of vista did not have any problems, and the transfer of software from my XP to vista machine went flawlessly.

Maybe you need to purge the Mozy installation, and all assoicated reg keys and files. Try a fresh install.

#2.1.1.1.1 Michael King (Homepage) on 2009-06-29 10:05 (Reply)

Jungledisk workgroup provides the ability for ALL your computers to backup to one place... mac / linux / windows... and having access to all my computer's backups in one place is wonderful no matter the OS
(linux / mac / windows)

So my vote is jungledisk pro... and no I do not work for them : wish they had the explorer extensions though...

#3 robert on 2009-07-24 13:08 (Reply)

After trying many of these services, I finally decided to just take it into my own hands. Of course this might not be an option for most, so take this with a grain of salt. Basically, I used my brother and parents home computers to do a round robin of backups of sorts. Both are running Filezilla (change ports accordingly to get around various ISP port blocks) and setting up for SSL/TLS connections only for FTPS (not SFTP, thats SSH). Once I have that setup, I simply run 2Brightsparks software, Syncback (SE or free) and setup a schedule. The best part is, they also back up to my house and so forth. So we all have a copy of each others stuff, even if another fails AND I lose my own stuff. Sensitive stuff I simply place in an encrypted Truecrypt volume or 7zip AES archive. I will be doing a write up this shortly on my blog as well. Thanks MP for this write up. ~C

#4 Corey (Homepage) on 2009-09-02 13:57 (Reply)

I am a current reseller of Jungledisk with Amazon S3 and am keeping my options open, especially now that they have increased thier prices. I could use some help and guidance. Thought I could just go into S3 directly and backup myself with something like syncback. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

#5 Rick Harris (Homepage) on 2009-11-23 14:59 (Reply)

Hey Rick,

As I understand JD/S3 is that JD is the interface to the S3 service. So to me that means it's simply an interface to talk to S3, which translates to not being able to just drag/drop to S3 yourself.

Unfortunately, if you are concerned about the data security itself, JD IMHO is the only way to go, as it's pub/priv key encrypted. That means even the techs cannot decrypt it.

Feel free to write me directly if you're interested in my "round robin" home backup solution.

#5.1 Corey (Homepage) on 2009-12-01 19:44 (Reply)

Corey,
I agree and disagree with you.

Both Carbonite and Mozy allow you to select your own encryption key. Carbonite has it in multiple places in large letters that if you select your own encryption key, and lose it, they can't recover your data.

However, I do agree with you in that at the time of writing the original article, and at the time of this comment, Carbonite still only has a single data center. Nothing matches the S3 service for redundancy / resiliency. Not until Carbonite opens a new datacenter in some other region than New England (Kansas anyone?)

#5.1.1 Michael King on 2009-12-01 22:20 (Reply)

I wouldn't touch Carbonite. They lost data to over 7000 customers and then tried to sue their hardware vendor. Google it.

I recommend JungleDisk or RemoteDataBackups. RDB is very expensive but offers enterprise class redundancy.

j

#6 Jason on 2010-05-15 21:03 (Reply)

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