Get settled in for the long haul

One of the key downsides of online backup is the time it takes to actually get your initial backup into the cloud. Some companies such as CrashPlan and DollyDrive allow you to ship a physical hard drive to “seed” your backup, greatly reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred online initially.

If you aren’t with these companies or want an alternative, you can create a tiered backup strategy. If you do it all at once, it can take months and you’ll find you’re missing key files when you need them. Here’s what I typically recommend in terms of a staged approach for the average user:

1. Work first. Realize that while most people say pictures are the most important items to back up, those typically take the longest to upload. I prefer to start with the Documents folder. These typically are probably the hardest to recreate, as well as being time sensitive. This is the folder you’re also working in most often, so you may be more likely to accidentally overwrite things. If you use Outlook or Entourage, exclude the Microsoft User Data as the database for those email programs tends to be huge.

Keep an eye on the backup program, and make sure it not only successfully backed up that initial folder, but is also correctly backing up changes daily. Typically this takes just a few days. Once you have that folder backing up, the next folder I suggest is the Desktop folder. For convenience (and a bit of poor training), many users keep documents on the desktop rather than the Documents folder.

2. App and system settings. Next is the Application Support and Preferences folder in your user library folder. These contain the settings for your various programs as well as some supporting data files.

After you’ve got those critical files happily updating it’s time for the bigger folders such as email and the rest of your library folder. Email, of course is very important and annoying if lost, but often it’s already stored elsewhere, like on your email provider’s servers.

3. Photos and home video. Once you’ve got the documents and various support files and folders, it’s time to tackle the photos. More and more users keep copies (albeit at a lower quality) on services such as Facebook and Flickr, as well as sync photos to their iPhone, so it probably isn’t so urgent for most. What I do recommend is to spend some time and back up your photos manually by periodically burning them to disc from iPhoto. Be sure to keep these disks offsite in case of disaster, maybe with friends or family.

4. Music last — or not at all. Finally, after these elements are successfully updating each day, it’s time to back up the rest of your hard drive and can go with the software’s suggested recommendations. You might think about excluding your iTunes folder, however. With iCloud and iTunes Match, you might consider waiting on these folders or not backing it up at all. A large media library can choke a backup system for months without a large return on investment. While Carbonite or Mozy is trying to back up a movie you ripped off of DVD to entertain the kids on your last road trip, it’s missing the actual pictures from the trip. Which are more important?

General tips

A general recommendation I have for the initial load is to upgrade your broadband speed, at least for a month or so. Most companies will give you a free trial period of around 30 days at a higher speed in hopes you keep the service. Take advantage of that and upload like crazy, although be careful if you use a metered service not to exceed your monthly bandwidth limit.

Make sure your Mac doesn’t go to sleep during the initial backup period. I’ve seen clients subscribe to an online service and never get an initial backup because the computer is shut down when not in use. Unfortunately, they often learn this when they try to restore after a disaster. Ouch.

Each hard drive is unique, so your data may not conform to these guidelines, but consider a game plan for your initial backup and make sure that you stagger that backup so at least something new is being backed up every month. Nothing hurts more than to have a data disaster and find you’ve been paying for a service and it hasn’t been backing up the stuff you want.

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Deals shares a lot of the functionality of the more full featured eBay mobile app, but it specifically targets eBay’s daily deals, and any zero bid items that have less than four hours remaining in their auction times, with no reserve price and free or fixed rate shipping, and a total price that includes shipping costs. In other words, with the deals the app presents, you pay exactly the price listed.

The app opens with a few featured daily deals already displayed in rotation on the main screen. You can then click on category buttons at the bottom, choosing between apparel, sports, computers, instruments, jewelry, electronics, collectibles, and photography to view auctions from those categories that fit the criteria I mentioned above.

The built-in searches are great for idle browsing (and possibly ruinous for those with strong impulse buying urges), but if you want to target items more specifically, you can either search on the fly, or create and save your own custom search. Creating a custom search allows you to specify keywords, a category, and a price range, and also assign an icon that will be displayed alongside the other default categories at the bottom of the app screen.

If you’d rather not save your search, there’s a magnifying glass icon at the top of the app that you can use instead to launch a one-time search. Next to that is another button that lists all the deals found in your most recent search. In use, I found that there wasn’t enough search criteria to ensure truly focused results. I’d love the addition of an “at least x dollars” filter, so that when I search for “iPhone,” for example, I can filter out most accessories and replacement parts.

Finally, you can sign in with your eBay account so that you can pay on the fly for any deal you find via the app with PayPal. The idea behind the app, after all, is to make sure eBay customers have access to the site no matter where they are. Apparently eBay mobile wasn’t driving enough business, and the Deals app is designed to remedy that situation. The app is free in the U.S. store (iTunes link), but beware the hidden costs of shopaholism.

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If you look at the amount of advertising out there these days, you’d think the Mac vs. PC war is a mere slap fight compared to the war being raged for your data backups. They want your data, and they want it now!

In one corner you have Mozy, which shares corporate DNA with former Mac backup champion, Retrospect. In the other corner is Carbonite, which began supporting the Mac this year. Mozy had almost a 2-year head start on Carbonite, but the software race doesn’t always go to the first one out of the gate. I gave both products an intense 3-month test. Which one deserves your data? Read on.

Round One: Staying Power

I wouldn’t trust my data to a brand-new company that could go out of business when I need my data (X-Drive, anyone?). Carbonite and Mozy are both well established. Of the two, Carbonite has the better name recognition, referencing Han Solo’s preservation in the “Star Wars” series. But Carbonite also seems to attract bad press like the Millennium Falcon attracted mynocks.

A server failure in 2007 lead to quite a few lawsuits, but according to Carbonite, no data was lost. Additionally, Carbonite was caught using “the Force” to influence reviews on Amazon — and by the Force I mean its employees. Carbonite uses Rush Limbaugh as a spokesperson, and you can’t get more controversial than Rush. However, Mozy has the “Mozy gal,” who has almost as high a following as Deltalina. This is a tough choice, and we’ll call Round One a draw.

Round Two: Setup and Installation

Carbonite cleans Mozy’s clock in software design. For reference, both Mozy and Carbonite require Tiger, but Carbonite is Intel only.

Both programs have assistants that automatically pick your critical data, as well as let you manually decide what to back up and how much bandwidth to use. Because these programs upload large amounts of data, the average system could take weeks to back up. Neither program will back up external media. Mozy claims it does, but if you detach it, it forgets the configuration. Carbonite flat-out refuses to back up externals. If you keep critical files, such as iTunes or iPhoto libraries, on something besides your main boot drive, neither product will back it up reliably.

Mozy is a background program that can easily be quit, reconfigured or uninstalled without asking for an Administrator password. Like the Death Star, one well-placed shot, or mouse click, renders this program useless. On the other hand, Carbonite runs as a daemon, requiring Administrator approval to change or quit. Mozy allows you to back up other users, but doesn’t always run when switching users.

Dare I say that Mozy operates like a clumsy blaster and Carbonite is the elegant light saber? The clear winner in this round is Carbonite. If you have more than one user account on your system, it’s time to go home, because Carbonite has won.

Round Three: Restoration

Carbonite takes a blow to the chin in this category. Both services offer a web-based restore program, not requiring installation of their software. Unfortunately, Carbonite does not handle Mac OS packages well, so I could not restore OmniOutliner and Keynote data files via its web site, since its software saw them as folders rather then files.

However, Carbonite restored those files properly after installing the client software. Unfortunately, after installing the client software for either product on the restoring computer, the services got confused and stopped backing up my old computer.

The process for restoring Mozy is a bit more complex. Mozy has you choose the files to restore, and emails you when they’re “ready.” The prep for a 6GB file took about an hour. Mozy also allows you to order a DVD of your files at a rather hefty price of 50 cents a gigabyte, plus a processing fee of $29.95 and a next-day shipping charge of $40.

Neither company wins this round: restoration isn’t easy or efficient. Both programs, go back into your corners and make this process easier for subscribers.

Round Four: Support

Neither company includes phone support, but Carbonite allows you to purchase it for $19.95 a year and Mozy provides it with their “Pro” package. I tested support via free online chat sessions. Of the multiple times I contacted support for both real and made-up problems, both companies failed to provide quality tech support folks that could understand the most basic of questions.

Emailing questions was equally frustrating. I consistently received conflicting and contradictory information. This is very scary when we’re talking about backups. Carbonite annoyed me more because their reps would reference instructions they were going to email me, trying to quickly close the chat. Neither company wins this round and both deserve an upper cut for lousy tech support.

Round Five: Security

Mozy, how could you let your guard down? Its software, when used properly, has all your critical and very personal data stored on its servers. When resetting your password, no security questions are asked. All you need is access to someone’s email and you can quickly and easily reset the Mozy password on an account. Email accounts can be hacked and if all you need is someone’s email password to get into any file on their computer, well, that’s a foul stench even Princess Leia can smell from across the galaxy.

Carbonite forces you to answer a series of personal questions before it’ll let you reset, and not the standard biographical info you can find on the web about anyone. The clear winner in this security round is Carbonite.

Round Six: Cost

Both Carbonite and Mozy have limited trial versions, but these tests were done with the full versions. Mozy offers a multitiered plan of 2GB of backup for home users for free. Unlimited backups for home users are $4.95 per month (though 20 percent off codes are easy to find). Business users of the Pro version pay $3.95 a month plus 50 cents per GB. Carbonite is simpler at $54.95 a year for everyone ($4.58 a month, for those without calculators). Carbonite is less expensive, but Mozy does offer the free version. We’ll score this round a draw.

The Winner

Overall, there’s no clear winner in this fight. If you have multiple users on your computer, Carbonite wins by default because it easily backups all accounts and prevents others from tampering. Additionally, if security is of high concern, then Carbonite is also the winner due to Mozy’s terrible security practices. However, if you have exclusive control of your email and don’t have multiple people using your Mac, then Mozy might be the better choice since it has the friendlier pricing plans. Who wins? I’ll leave that up to you to let me know in the comments, and/or with your wallet.

But wait, a new contender approaches the ring! New to the scene is Internet darling BackBlaze. The winner of the Mozy vs. Carbonite bout will go on to fight BackBlaze in a further review, coming soon. Make your predictions now.

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Get ready for yet another cloud-based backup offering for the Mac. The folks at Carbonite are now shipping a beta version for us Mac folks. Should we be excited? Well, let’s see…

After trying out their software, I can’t say that it does anything more useful than my current solution, Backblaze. In fact, I can say it is less useful. Read on for details on the positives and negatives.

Installation & Main UI

Installing Carbonite is pretty straightforward. You download the package from the Carbonite site and follow the standard install process. Once installed, Carbonite adds a menu item and System Preference Pane.

Carbonite Primary UI

Within this screen, you can define if the Backup is Enabled, Disabled, or Paused. There is also a checkbox for using low-priority mode to conserve bandwidth. Honestly, I can’t tell if this is useful or not, as it took the app over 10 minutes just to calculate 100GB of data. Let’s say that from what I can tell, Carbonite is not speedy.

If you choose to disable Carbonite, this screen changes by adding an Uninstall button for quick and easy removal of the software.

Backup UI

What’s interesting here is that Carbonite works similarly to Mozy in terms of backing up specific data rather than just backing up all of your data like Backblaze or Time Machine. On the flip side, you can completely customize what you want to backup. However, you cannot specify applications or system folders.

Carbonite Backup UI

Restore UI

Carbonite can restore your files via this simple UI. Just select the files you want to restore and then specify the drive for restoration.

Carbonite Restore UI

It also has a restore wizard. So, if your drive fails and you need to restore to another Mac, you can simply walk through this wizard and wait patiently for your files to download.

Carbonite Restore Wizard

Summary

Carbonite has done a reasonable job providing a simple Mac client for users who want offsite backup. The product is easy to set up and is competitively priced. However…

If given the choice between Backblaze, Carbonite, or Mozy, the answer appears to be simple: Backblaze. For the money (each service is approximately $50/year), you get more coverage with Backblaze and more recovery options as well. Mozy is a great alternative if you want some free storage (2GB) and then decide to add more.

In the end, what Carbonite is offering for the Mac is decent. You get roughly a two-week trial, so if it fits your needs, then please give it a shot. If you’re a small office and have been running Carbonite on your Windows PCs, then to maintain consistency it makes sense to use Carbonite with your Macs.

However if you are looking at all of the options available to Mac users for online backup, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

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