Cloud Backup Services Compared

Grazed from ExtremeTech. Author:  Joel Hruska.

In our first story, we discussed backup philosophy, common misconceptions of what constituted a backup, and the criteria we’d use for developing a comprehensive backup policy. This article focuses on online/cloud backup services and compares three of the top solutions on the market today — Backblaze, Mozy and Carbonite.

The explosion in “cloud computing” as a moniker has made it difficult to distinguish the difference between various types of services. We suggest three basic categories: File lockers, online backup services, and online archives. Archiving services are beyond the scope of this series and are currently marketed towards businesses, not consumers. Amazon Glacier attracted a great deal of attention when it launched a few weeks back, but it’s not intended for just anyone to use. There’s no management console of any kind, and data transfers are handled via Java or .NET scripts. This article uses the phrase “online backup service” and “cloud backup service” interchangeably…

The difference between file lockers and cloud/online backup services lies in how these products address file sharing and data locality. File lockers like SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive emphasize content sharing and collaboration. Online backup services typically allow customers to search their backup sets online and offer browser-based consoles to facilitate data retrieval from any system, but are not designed to share backup contents with groups of people. As for data locality, most file lockers allow users to upload content and delete the local copy, provided that synchronization is turned off for that particular folder. Online backup services don’t allow this; if you delete a file locally, it’s wiped from your backup set 30 days later…

Read more from the source @ http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136531-backup-master-class-mozy-carbonite-and-backblaze-compared