Since we recently moved, my current backup system has become some what undone. I have not been able yet, to reactive my linux home-server, since neither its power input nor its TV signal output works in the new environment. But since backing up to an aging piece of low-cost hardware running an obsolete version of an OS, which I also happen to use for experimentation does not leave the kind of warm fuzzy feelings which one typically expects from a backup solution, maybe it was time again to look around for another solution.
From a maintainable and reliability point of view, it would be better to store the backups in the cloud, rather than on a single computer in the same room. On the other hand, sending the data out of the room opens up some serious privacy concerns
The solutions for online backups on mac are still a bit limited. There are some portable solutions using Amazon's S3 cloud storage service or the very open-protocol based rsync.net service, which could have supported an alternate target for my existing home-grown script. But since I wanted to primarily backup my media library (music, photos and videos), the storage cost added up to some real money very quickly.
In the end, I started using a commercial solution from CrashPlan, which has both a mac client and a matching online storage service (single datacenter located in the US). The basic client which supports both Mac and Linux is free (as in free beer) for personal use and there is a free trial for the online storage, which otherwise has a flat-rate pricing of about $50 per year.
The backup client runs continuously in the background and tries to be nice to both the CPU and network so that the computer should still be usable, even if there is a backup going on. In addition to the online service, CrashPlan can also do backups to attached hard-drives or in some peer-peer fashion to other computers running the same client.
So far the system has survived the baptism by fire of doing an online backup of my media-library over about 10 days of continuous backup activity, surviving a reboot and several network disruptions without a hitch.
Obviously the quality of backup is measured by how reliably the data could be restored after a disaster, but judging from the experience with the initial backup, the solution seems solid enough to give it a try for a while.
From a maintainable and reliability point of view, it would be better to store the backups in the cloud, rather than on a single computer in the same room. On the other hand, sending the data out of the room opens up some serious privacy concerns
The solutions for online backups on mac are still a bit limited. There are some portable solutions using Amazon's S3 cloud storage service or the very open-protocol based rsync.net service, which could have supported an alternate target for my existing home-grown script. But since I wanted to primarily backup my media library (music, photos and videos), the storage cost added up to some real money very quickly.
In the end, I started using a commercial solution from CrashPlan, which has both a mac client and a matching online storage service (single datacenter located in the US). The basic client which supports both Mac and Linux is free (as in free beer) for personal use and there is a free trial for the online storage, which otherwise has a flat-rate pricing of about $50 per year.
The backup client runs continuously in the background and tries to be nice to both the CPU and network so that the computer should still be usable, even if there is a backup going on. In addition to the online service, CrashPlan can also do backups to attached hard-drives or in some peer-peer fashion to other computers running the same client.
So far the system has survived the baptism by fire of doing an online backup of my media-library over about 10 days of continuous backup activity, surviving a reboot and several network disruptions without a hitch.
Obviously the quality of backup is measured by how reliably the data could be restored after a disaster, but judging from the experience with the initial backup, the solution seems solid enough to give it a try for a while.