Never Use a Web Hosting Server to Backup Data from the Hard Drive

hey - dont be dissing mozy in that way, it’s a flat rate for consumers

Google app engine also data store and computing space. The app engine is in its infant stage soon it will be matured. I guess the google app engine rules out all of the providers.

Just an update, your pricing for Mozy.com is incorrect. I’ve been using them from the start and never paid more than $5/month. Great service if you have a lot of data to back up.

Hi Amit,
On Dreamhost the maximum discount a new user gets, is limited to $50 from last few months.
The rest $47 goes (forcefully) into the account of referring person.

By the way may I know which hosting service you are using here at DI.

-Rahul :-)

Thanks guys - I incorrectly used the pricing of MozyPro not MozyHome. Will fix this soon. So it’s $5 per month flat.

The Web Hosting space needs to be used only for serving web content like HTML, content stored in CMS, images etc.
If you are looking for offsite backup for your personal data, try DropBox or other Amazon S3 Tools.

You could easily get around such T&Cs by creating a simple link pointing to all the backed-up files, tell no one about it and it won’t get any traffic, of course.

db

Handy - I’ve been looking for cheap server backup to store some small SQL databases, Mozy looks good!

I use BT for my computers as you can install it on any number of PCs for £5 per month. It has a 50GB storage limit though - more than enough for my two PCs.

What struck me was that:
1. CTO of such a big internet related media company couldn’t find a better place to store his data.
2. He was more foolish than even an average internet user who knows what those advertized huge storage spaces are really for.
Now you know whether to believe any tech news/review coming out of ZD or not..

SugarSync - 10G for $25 annually

Very good example of how we could never rely only on other web hosting companies if we need to protect our valuable data. Better to make a few identical copies on DVD-ROM and TeraData tape and store them somewhere safe (bank, grandmother’s vine cellar):

that’s not good thing to delete files with out sending any notifications to the user.
but it also very bad thing to use hosting service for backup purpose

Check out crash plan if you have access to another machine with an internet connection.

Jamie

in that case go for bluehost , they have unlimited disk space :P , I have backed up a some data(75 mb) on bluehost , they don’t seem to mind but i am sure they will if it was 250 GB.

Small question amit why do you use a low end hosting service like Dreamhost (which will disable your site when u r dugg ) instead of using a dedicated server like site’s of your size do ?

Thanks for the info (or warning) on relying on free sites for storage. I store small amounts of images and data files for free on my ISP server (max of 20 MB) and one of my Google Pages sites (max of 100 MB). Though I link to some of the files for my other sites….

Hi good graph, but could you please add some figures at the X and Y axis, so that reader will have an idea what numbers the lines represent.

Thanks

@#4 (Rahul): I am afraid that’s not correct. link .

Yeah, I had the experience with Dreamhost making me delete all the files that I uploaded. I think it’s false advertising to offer people 500+GB of storage they can’t actually use. But whatever. I use Amazon S3 now and have no problems.

i got tired of waiting to recover stuff from mozy, and they only let me keep 30 days of files. i use universe point’s ion to send data from my home to my office and vice-versa. if i need something back, i just drive home and get the external hard drive. No storage space cost.

I was doing something similar to back up a Windows Home Server (mainly because Mozy/Carbonite do NOT work on WHS - it detects the OS as Server 2003). I got about 35Gig of legally owned material to their ftp server only wake one more with my account suspended. They would not re-enable until the files were deleted - they were not part of a public accessible location either.

I guess I can’t see how any normal user could use up 500GB of space for a site that is no more important than to rely on a $5/mo hosting plan …

People don’t realize that hosters DO NOT have the storage space for people to upload 250GB of data.

Lets put some numbers out there.
100 users on dreamhost each have 500GB, thats 500TB!
~6$/month * 100 = 600$/month
A T1 costs ~400$/month, thats a profit of 200$/month. Dreamhost probably has employees…which costs some $$ (lets say 100$).
So 100$ profit /month but they also need to buy equipment (500GB HD costs about 100$).
So according to my model if they gave everyone 500GB, they would make no money. Now they probably have 1000’s of users who supposedly have 500GB, thats 5PB…thats a lot of storage and bandwidth - however this is NOT the case. They secretly limit you…because there is no way that if every user uploaded 500GB of data that they would have enough HD space for everyone.

Next time you think about signing up for a hosting company don’t look at how much space they give you, look at their track record. In this industry when it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Despite the risks, I think mozy & carbonite are good solutions for people to save their expenses under this recession period.

DreamHost just began a policy of giving shared hosting account holders 1 FTP/SFTP backup account with 50GB of online backup storage, free, extra GB at $0.10 each.

This has prompted me to download SyncBackPro (the free version is great for backing up to a hard drive, but pro supports SFTP and backing up locked files).

Not a bad deal when you think about it. To back up 100GB now would cost $5/month, and not counting the price of a hosting account, 50GB is free.

Take that, Moby!