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Most local backup regimes are semi-automated but still rely on somebody to change the backup medium (tape or disk) and take it offsite. Online backup services are therefore increasingly seen as an attractive and fully automated alternative.

The big names include Carbonite, iDrive and Mozy. All tend to place the emphasis on individuals and small businesses. They offer broadly similar propositions of online backup and retrieval benefiting from encrypted data transfer. The services rely on an initial upload of a full copy of the data; thereafter the software looks for differences between the files on the backup and the files on your own machine and transfers only the changed data.

The amount of historical data kept varies between the different services. Carbonite, iDrive and Mozy all support both Windows and Apple operating systems, but differences in the software can mean that the terms of service are slightly different for the different products. There are significant differences in the pricing models.

Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) charges $54.95 per year for unlimited backup capacity. While predominantly marketed at individual workstations, its online forums suggest it works on servers too. The difficulty in using this budget account on a 500GB server seems to be that it has a fair-usage policy, which I suspect might lead to your account being terminated before you had completed uploading the initial data.

iDrive Pro (www.idrive.com) charges $49.95 a month for a 500GB account. Windows users benefit from a historical record of the last 30 versions of a file, while Apple users get 10 days' worth.

MozyPro (http://mozy.com) is reassuringly marketed for use with servers, but costs $256.95 per month for a 500GB capacity server. Mozy also states that backup is still possible when files are open or locked, which can be a critical feature.

Explosion of data

The problem for architects with all these online services is that even small practices tend to have quite large servers. While cad and Microsoft Office documents have got a little more bloated in size over the years, it is the explosion of digital photographs, Photoshop and desktop publishing files that has fuelled huge growth in data. The emphasis on individual users and relatively small businesses is no accident. The time taken to upload the initial information set becomes a significant limitation on the practicality of the service.

One solution is to look for UK-based providers which may be able to offer negotiable fees for large data sets and the facility to collect the initial copy of the data by hard disk, to be uploaded to their servers.

When considering online backup, look carefully at the small print — online backup services all spell out limitations in liability. An online backup is potentially a great addition to your arsenal, but I would recommend that it is augmented by a thorough locally executed backup. The era of remembering to change backup media and taking it offsite is not going to end quite yet.

For more information:
www.carbonite.com
www.idrive.com
http://mozy.com