🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 17 May 1999 21:34:53 GMT, bettemeyer@my-dejanews.com
wrote:

>I was wondering if any of you back up your files offsite. I've been
>checking out the services of @Backup:
>
>http://www.backupp.com
>
>Their service is an automated backup that, if you leave your computer
>on, will automatically fire up your modem and back up whatever files you
>have previously set up to keep stored. Since I do so much of my own work
>at home, I'd like to know my data is safe, and a natural disaster could
>easily take my Zip disks with it.
>
>Bette

What if your computer crashes and the natural disaster happens at
backupp.com? More to the point, this doesn't really make sense if
you're using a modem. How long does it take to upload 2000
megabytes at 10,000 bytes per second? (56K, and getting about 2:1
compression from your modem protocol) The answer is 55+ hours.
While incremental backups will go a lot faster, not making an
occasional full backup means you'll have to get the image backup
plus copies of every single incremental backup and all of those
files had better be intact. 

In other words, unless you've running a broadband link to the Net
that's a lot faster than ISDN, (say, xDSL or cablemodem)
backupp.com makes absolutely no sense for an individual or small
business. 

The way to back up your files offsite is to get a *TAPE* drive,
make an extra copy of the image backup at regular intervals and
find a depository for your tapes. For an individual, this might
be a friend at the other end of the state and you're mailing the
files. Or a safe deposit box.

This supposes that your computer hard drive is larger than 100
megs. I remember back when I had a 20 meg hard drive and was
using floppies to backup. Having to load 16 disks rather
discouraged me from running image backups as often as I really
should have. If you've got a typical entry-level computer hard
drive and figuring it's half full, that's 20 Zip disks. 

If you want to make sure you run backups as often as you should
(assuming your purpose is to keep the contents of your HD intact
if it crashes) you need a backup setup which will allow you to
run your backup with ONE set of user operations... start the
backup and run it overnight. You can't do this if you have to
change disks, CD-Rs or even tapes. 

A.Lizard

>
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