Back Up Sites – From Zero PC to CrashPlan
May 21, 2012
I recently got tired of having information in different places and not being able to access or organize all of it. My wife considers me a digital squirrel and I would agree. Originally I kept things in external hard drives, and I still do. But after hearing an unpleasant click from one of twins, I decided it was time to go to the cloud. Originally I thought of using Carbonite. They recently released an interesting mobile app and felt it their unlimited storage would be a good investment. Unlike Mozy, I could upload all of my content to Carbonite.
Yet, after looking at a series of reviews, I decided to go with CrashPlan instead. Surprisingly they are also located in Minneapolis, MN. That was a pleasant surprise as I ended up feeling as if I was contributing to the local economy. But with that aside, they seem to not slow down your upload speed after a certain number of files (unlike most critics of Carbonite). I have not been able to go over 3.0 mbps in the upload, despite using a net that goes over 50 mbps for upload. Because of that I have since been uploading it from a slower connection as I cannot upload faster despite having the connection to do so. I could seed the hard drive but is an extra cost I rather avoid since I am living in Mpls.
Regardless, I am very happy with CrashPlan so far I should have the close to 2 TB of data that I want to upload available to me through the cloud, via an iPad or a laptop soon enough. Unfortunately, as a backup site, its file management system once files are uploaded is not that flexible. I expected that but I wanted an alternative. I decided to download 3 iPad apps that would allow me to connect to various cloud services simultaneously. I came across ZeroPC, iFiles, and OrganicDocs HD and I have been able to connect to most of my cloud services through them. Another interesting site I came across is called Jolicloud. It is not yet available on iOS but it seems pretty lightweight but capable and I might add it soon to an old computer I would like to make a bit faster. Not to keen on DSL (Damn Small Linux) or various other small distributions, but I have a couple of computers with half burned GPUs and they turn off after a few minutes. I been trying to have them run with an operating system that is both flexible, modern, and doesnt crash the old PCs. Maybe Jolicloud OS can help there. Either way, the Chrome App version of it is pretty neat.
