Cloud Backups

A bit earlier, in Cloud Storage, I talked about cloud services that let you store files online, sync them across devices, and share them with other people. In the same vein, you can use cloud storage to back up your Mac, PC, or other device. In this chapter, I go into more detail about how cloud backup differs from cloud syncing, explore the pros and cons, and mention a number of providers that offer backup services.

As useful as it may be to back up your data to the Cloud, you should also consider the importance of backing up data from the Cloud (either to local storage or to another cloud service). After all, no service is bulletproof—hardware malfunctions, software glitches, and Internet outages could prevent you from reaching your email, contacts, documents, and other data created online in a Web browser. I offer some advice about that issue in the second part of this chapter.

Backing Up Stuff to the Cloud

The fundamental truth about backups is that if your data is in just one place (as in, on your computer’s hard disk or SSD), it’s not safe. Anything from user error to theft to a natural disaster could wipe out your valuable documents, photos, email, and other digital assets in an instant. If you have never experienced data loss, the law of probability suggests it’s only a matter of time. Having a copy of your data in another location (or, better yet, two other locations) is an insurance policy no one should be without.

One of the places you might choose to back up your data is the Cloud. Lots of services offer cloud data backup, often charging only pennies a day for unlimited storage.

Cloud Sync vs. Cloud Backup

To reiterate what I said in Backup, it’s tempting to think of a cloud syncing service (such as Dropbox) as a backup too. After all, it does put a copy of your data in the Cloud (a second location) and on each of your other devices (even more locations). But before you get too comfortable, be sure to read the fine print. If a service syncs all your changed files immediately—as most do—then accidentally changing or deleting a document on your computer would result in that change propagating to the Cloud and to all your other devices; you might not be able to retrieve the older or deleted file.

Many cloud storage providers offer versioning, which keeps earlier versions of files that have since been updated, and some also let you undelete files that you’ve removed locally. Even so, beware:

• A cloud service may store old versions and deleted files only for a short period of time. For example, Dropbox keeps them for only 30 days, unless you pay an extra $39 per year for the Extended Version History option, which increases the storage time to a year. (Of course, the same consideration applies to cloud backup providers. While unlimited versioning is common, Backblaze, for example, saves old versions and deleted files for only 30 days.)
• At best, a cloud storage service syncs (and keeps versions of) only the folders you tell it to—and you’ll probably keep that number small if for no other reason than cost, since most cloud storage providers charge by capacity. If you lose a file that’s located somewhere else, tough.
• Services that focus on syncing tend to place less emphasis on security than services for whom backup is the primary function. Check how (if at all) your data is encrypted (refer to Security in the Cloud). Specifically, ask prospective providers whether there’s any way they could read your files without your explicit permission.

In contrast to the typical sync service, cloud services whose main business is backing up files typically have the following characteristics:

• Unlimited (or at least generous) storage: It’s easy to find companies that will charge you, say, $5 per month to back up unlimited data from a single computer. Even when a backup provider has a fixed storage quota, it’s often higher for the price than a comparable sync provider.
• Broader scope: Although details vary, most backup apps err on the side of inclusivity—for example, backing up all the files in your home folder or home directory unless you specify otherwise.
• Convenient restoration: Backup services’ apps often have a Restore button that lets you quickly recover your files, as opposed to digging through a Web interface for old versions, one file at a time.
• Heavy-duty encryption: Most online backup services strongly encrypt your data before it leaves your device and keep it encrypted on the server. The best let you manage your own encryption key so that employees couldn’t read your files even if they wanted to.
• Seeding: If you have a lot of data to back up and a slow Internet connection, you may be able to send a local hard drive with a full backup to the provider as a seed—an initial set of data that will be copied to the servers and form the basis of your ongoing backups. Once your data is copied to the company’s servers, future backups upload only new and changed data, which goes much more quickly.
• Better data retention: Backup services generally keep older versions and deleted files for longer periods of time or even indefinitely—and in some cases, this is user-configurable.

As always, everything in the list above is a generalization; be sure to read the details about any service you’re considering to see how well it stacks up in each area.

Backup Advice

I like and use cloud backup, but not exclusively. Having researched backups extensively, my feeling is that a solid backup plan involves storing at least one copy of your data locally and at least one in a secondary location (which could be the Cloud—or it could be a hard drive you keep in a safe deposit box or a relative’s house and rotate out from time to time).

Cloud backups are convenient and cost-effective, but they aren’t right for everyone. You’ll need a broadband Internet connection with plenty of bandwidth, for a start. You should also check whether your ISP caps the amount of data you can transfer per month (this should be noted in your contract or billing statement); if that number is too small, online backups may be a nonstarter. Even with a fast connection and a generous data cap, your first full backup may take days or even weeks, during which time your data won’t be fully protected. (Seeding can sometimes take the edge off this problem.)

Local backups (typically stored on an external hard drive) are much faster than cloud backups, both when backing up and restoring files. And, even if it would be impractical—for reasons of cost, bandwidth, or data caps—to store all your files online, none of those things should be a barrier with local backups.

It’s also possible to store a complete copy of everything from your computer’s main hard disk or SSD on a local hard drive in such a way that you can boot from the duplicate later on (or at least restore your entire disk from a backup), which protects you in the case of a drive failure and enables you to get back to work quickly.

In short, local backups are great for speed, while cloud backups provide convenient protection against anything that might wipe out your local backups (a burglar, a fire, whatever).

Example Cloud Backup Providers

I did extensive research for The Wirecutter to compare cloud backup services; the results are in my article Best Online Cloud Backup Service. Although I talk about a number of services in that article, two in particular stand out:

• CrashPlan: My favorite, CrashPlan backs up your Mac or PC to a local hard drive, cloud storage, or both. It even lets you back up your data to a friend’s computer while your friend backs up to yours; this is called peer-to-peer backup. Several pricing plans are available, but as an example, a one-year subscription for unlimited backups from a single computer costs $59.99. I like CrashPlan so much I wrote a book about it: Take Control of CrashPlan Backups.
• Backblaze: This service focuses on simplicity. Configuration is as easy as it gets, and for just $5 per month, you can back up unlimited data from a single computer. When it comes to restoring files, Backblaze’s approach is more complicated than I prefer, but it gets the job done.

Backing Up Stuff from the Cloud

I recently heard the following scary story. A woman had spent months putting together a 65-page photo book, featuring stories and pictures from her son’s first year of life, on a site called AdoramaPix (which, from what I hear, is an excellent service for that sort of thing). But then she accidentally clicked the wrong button, and instead of a single page being cleared as she’d intended, her whole book disappeared—and there was no evident way to restore it. Since the entire document was created in a Web browser, she had no backup. After a frantic phone call, tech support was able to recover the text of the book, but not the photos (which, luckily, the woman had other copies of).

Now, I don’t mean to pick on AdoramaPix in particular, because this sort of thing could happen on any site where you create data in a Web browser and store it online without your own local copy. The point is: stuff goes wrong. Whether it’s due to a bug in a Web app, unclear instructions that lead you to click the wrong button, or a disk failure on a server, cloud-based apps can—and sometimes do—lose user data.

The moral of the story is: back up your data from cloud-based apps.

Broadly speaking, you have two options. You can back up stuff from the Cloud to your computer (which will then, of course, have its own backups). Or you can back up from one cloud service to a different cloud service.

I can’t offer step-by-step instructions, because every service is different. But here are some general guidelines:

• Email: If you use Gmail or any other Web-based email service, I suggest also setting up a desktop email client such as Apple Mail (on a Mac), Thunderbird, or Outlook to connect to the account using IMAP and download copies of all your messages. Then you can back up that data, along with the rest of your disk, to a local hard drive. (If you normally use an IMAP or Exchange client, rather than a Web browser, to check your email, you need only ensure that your email data is part of your regular backups.)

  Alternatively, you can use an app that stores a local backup of your email (such as Gmvault for Gmail), or back up your email accounts to another location in the Cloud using a cloud service, such as Dropmyemail.com.

• Online storage: If you use Dropbox or any other cloud-based storage service, you’ll most likely have one or more folders on your computer with local copies of your files (assuming you’ve configured all of your online data to sync with your computer). Be sure you back those up too—don’t assume that the copies in the Cloud count as a backup.
• Web apps: Do you write documents, edit photos, or create other content inside a Web browser window? Remember the story I started this topic with. Find out whether the service offers a way to download your content. If you can, do so regularly—and then back up those files. If there’s no way to download your content, you might think twice about continuing to use that service.

If you happen to rely on Google’s services (such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and so on), you can back up all your content to a Mac using an app called CloudPull, or to another location in the Cloud using Spanning Backup for G Suite. A service called CloudAlly can back up data from G Suite, Office365, Box, and other services to a secondary cloud location. A similar cloud-to-cloud backup service designed mainly for businesses is Backupify.

Joe’s Recommendations: Cloud Backup

As I said in The Wirecutter article I mentioned earlier (Best Online Cloud Backup Service), when it comes to backing up your computer(s) to the cloud, I prefer and recommend CrashPlan for most people. It’s not perfect, but on the whole, I think it’s the best option currently available. However, remember that you should also have one or more local (hard drive-based) backups of your computer.

For backing up data from the cloud (such as email and cloud-based documents), my personal preference is to use a tool that lets me download and save copies locally, as opposed to using cloud-to-cloud backups (which give me yet another thing to subscribe to). If the source of that cloud data is Google, CloudPull is the optimal tool.

And don’t forget about mobile backups. For my iPhone and iPad, I use iCloud Backup. Android users should check out G Cloud.