Best choice for a personal “online backup” in Europe [closed]

Question

I'm looking for an online backup solution for personal use - besides all the usual requirements (like not too expensive, since it's for personal use), I'd like to add two requirements to it:

• data center should be in Europe (I don't want my personal data stored in the US, when the next crazed president comes along and wants to confiscate and rifle through everybody's files.....)
• the online backup store should be accessible through a drive letter in cmd.exe

So far, I've looked at a few services, but none have totally convinced me:

• Dropbox is looking ok, but they insist on creating a silly "My Dropbox" directory in my data path - and there's no way I can choose that name. Sorry - "My everything" is for dummies - I don't like that, I like to name my files and folders according to my liking
• LiveDrive is OK, too - they offer European storage, drive letter and all - but those drive letters are only available in the Windows Explorer - and not on the cmd.exe command line :-( and since I do 99% of my work on the command line, this is a major drawback.....

Any other services I haven't looked at worth checking out?

Marc

Answer 1

Just use NTFS links to work around the "My Dropbox" annoyance (and I agree, it is annoying).

Check out the NTFS Link shell extension, which makes it easy to create/manage NTFS links and junction points from the Explorer context menu.

For more info, see this page on the official DropBox wiki.

Answer 2

Jungledisk in combination with Amazon S3 servers located in EU. Jungledisk is US-based company (backed by Rackspace), but you're just buying a software from them, and using servers which belong to Amazon in EU, so you're technically US-free. There are two differences between your Dropbox and this:

1. Your data is encrypted and nobody can read it except you.
2. Synchronization is not immediate like with Dropbox (but you set the synchronization period).
3. Sharing your data is maybe not so easy as with Dropbox.

Personally I use both, Jungledisk/S3 for backup and Dropbox for synchronizing "working" documents between several computers and sharing. I've looked into a lot of solutions and found Jungledisk, Dropbox and S3 easiest and best from both technical and security standpoint. All other alternatives I looked at give someone access to your data and are not as distributed/redundant as S3.

Answer 3

For any online backup solution: what if you need to restore?

How would you restore your system into a working state without first somehow installing the OS to be able to use the restore software? And even when just restoring your documents and email: how much time would it take to download all of that (throttling, or limitations of your own connection)? If restoring a full system takes days or weeks, and might not even be as complete as expected, then that's a major fail in my opinion. For me, that rules out many (if not all) of the online backup services for full backups.

The crashplan.nl website has a report on online backup speed comparison of 36 37 services.

I don't know how to value these results, but some of the notes are surely interesting. Some examples:

• .iso and .mp3 files are excluded by default by [..]
• [..] restore was aborted after 6 hours, result: only 1 file was restored by [..]
• software says that 0 files are skipped, nevertheless, only 19,063 of the 27,174 files are restored
• [..] is unsuitable as online backup: the software requires a drive letter mapping. This will give a future virus direct access to the backup files.
• after an initial fast start, [..] backup speed dropped to almost zero (1kbps)

A simular test is available in Dutch and in German, the latter without the 10 Dutch providers, but all showing the exact same figures, and the exact same specifications for the ADSL connection. As crashplan-pro.de is just an alias for the Dutch site, I assume the results are based on tests using a computer located in the Netherlands.

I also assume they did the tests themselves. As such it may not be surprising that the results claim they are the fastest, especially as the computer may have been located quite close to the backup servers. But in fact they were also tested "best value" in the July 2009 edition of WINMAG Pro, which can be downloaded (Dutch) from their site as well. (Note that crashplan.nl is not affiliated with crashplan.com, even though they do use CrashPlan PRO software.)

(See a response by crashplan.nl in another answer to this same question. For the Netherlands see also www.vergelijkbackuponline.nl and www.storageproviders.nl)

Answer 4

What makes you think European hosts are any better protected against intrusions of privacy? If your data should happen to pass through Sweden, it could be recorded without any warrant. Or Britain, Italy, France, the Netherlands...

If you want your data to be private, you need to make sure that it is only transmitted strongly encrypted. If it is, it does not matter where it is stored.

Answer 5

I would highly recommend Jungle disk, based on a combination of Amazon S3 and EC2. The ec2 part of it allows you to move files about etc, without having to incure more costs I think.

Works out extremely cheap, although I supposed there could be cheaper if you find a service that allows unlimited uploads.

Also, at first I zipped up sections of my data and uploaded a collection of zips, but this would actually make it more expensive, and less usable, as the software knows how to only upload parts of files that have changed etc.. but this doesn't work with zips.

Answer 6

Checkout rsync.net they are more expensive than DropBox but you get complete control.

Answer 7

Since you mention livedrive, they have ftp access and you can get programs that allow you to map the ftp site to a drive letter which work from the command prompt. eg Webdrive or Netdrive. There is (I believe) a older but free version of netdrive.

Answer 8

I think you should give Dropbox another look. Yes "My Dropbox" is annoying, but it's a tiny nitpick if you're seriously looking for a stable, fast online backup solution that works. ( Btw, the folder is just "Dropbox" on linux. "My Dropbox" is reserved for Windows only! )

I've used Dropbox for a little over an year now, and their service has been stellar. The sync is pretty fast - the uploads seem to happen at almost the highest speed my ISP will allow, the files appear almost instantaneously on the web interface and on all other shares in short time. They used to maintain revision history too, though I think they've cut back on the amount of time for which they do that now.

I have Windows, Mac OS X and Linux machines on my network and Dropbox works like a charm on them all.

It also works really well for sharing files with friends and family since they can pick it off the web interface without having to run the Dropbox client.

I haven't really tried many online backup services apart from Dropbox since I don't have any issues with their service. Yes, I use Ubuntu One, but just to back up my Ubuntu configuration files.

Answer 9

A friend of mine seems to be quite happy with Mozy. 2 GB for free, $4.95 per month for unlimited. Think my friend said he had 300 GB there or something... I would try it myself, but the upload speed here stinks so would take a year to upload :p

• Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they're open or closed.
• 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers. (So I guess it should be safe for presidents :p)
• Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
• New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
• Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
• Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

Answer 10

Most of these of-site backup software encrypt your data on your computer before sending it to their data center.

Unless you suspect NSA knows how to crack AES, you'r pretty safe with your data in the US.

I use jungle disk with amazon S3 Europe, just because I am in europe and have better latency to their servers.

Answer 11

I use SOS Online Backup. I liked it so much I became a Partner.

Features

* Unlimited versions of one file,
* Unlimited number of computers on one account,
* No archive deleted, ever.
* Local and online backup,
* Heavy duty encryption,

Also

* Data is also accessible worldwide via a web browser,
* Continuous data protection with "Live Protect",
* Backup files even while they are in use,
* Share files simply,

Plus

* Great support when you have questions.

Answer 12

If you really want a company based in Europe, try humyo; I think it's a german company with the servers located in Britain. They offer free accounts, similar to Dropbox (in my opinion, you should stick with Dropbox, seems much better).

Answer 13

I also assume they did the tests themselves.

Yes, crashplan.nl confirms that we ran these tests ourselves.

As such it may not be surprising that the results claim they are the fastest, especially as the computer may have been located quite close to the backup servers.

Last week we ran a test from The Netherlands to backgroundbackup.ca, a CrashPlanPRO service provider with servers located in Canada. That online backup service ended up at rank #3, see the online backup speed comparison.

Conclusion: even over a long distance the CrashPlan engine is speedy with this specific file set.

How to value the results?

There will never be a perfect test because every ones file set is different, ranging from the music/photo collections, database servers, file servers, webservers, to whatever we even can't image now.

In our case we would like to test loads of relatively small files, because this is:

1. our intended use (my desktop machine contains 1,092,787 files in 139GB)
2. where most solutions crack down, fail or even don't start at all

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@niffle: thanks that you appreciate this test, it was an awfull lot of work (weeks) to try all these different services.

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I don't see mapped drive letters as a security risk...

@marc_s: Virus makers get more clever every day. Some of the virusses are created to do as much damage as possible. Ranging from infecting local files, floppy drives, any attached usb storage device, files on network shares, to reconfiguring routers in the local network using (default) passwords. The risk of having a drive letter as that the virus enumerates all attached drive(letter)s and starts to infect whatever it can get access to: infecting first your local drive and sooner or later your backupped files through the mapped drive letter.