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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Networking > Best Practices for DIY Offsite Backup Thread

Best Practices for DIY Offsite Backup Thread
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schalliol
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Feb 3, 2011, 04:19 PM
 
Most people (here) know that they should have an off-site backup in the event of total loss of the dwelling (fire, flood, theft of all the electronics, etc.). I know that some of us have been using Mozy for unlimited backup options at a pretty reasonable price (less than $5/month if annual). On my part, I have 780GB online there, and under the new data plan I would have to pay $75.50 per month. Of course, I will not be continuing this service. There are other nice services that work well for small amounts of data using Amazon's S3 or other platforms. Since I had my parents set up for Mozy as well (~200GB) I thought that perhaps doing a reciprocal local backup would work, leading to this thread.

On my part, I bought a big hard drive I am going to connect to their Mac desktop and I will have them backup to my NAS (either on the array or a USB volume attached to it). For the initial transfer, I might do sneaker/car/plane-net and then sync updates over the Internet. I figured that in the event I had total failure, we could make a copy of the data at their house and then physically transport the external drive to my place. On my end, I would either transfer a drive or copy data onto a new one for transport.

I know I am not the only one who has this concept, and so I wondered if people who do this or are thinking of it might comment on the following points:
  • Client-side Sync Software Used
  • Server Software Used, if Any
  • Syncing Totally Automated Once Set-up
  • Problems with Method, if Any
  • Protocol/Type of Encryption Used in Transport
  • Type of Encryption Used in Storage, if Any
Thank you for contributing to this thread!
( Last edited by schalliol; Feb 3, 2011 at 04:31 PM. )
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schalliol  (op)
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Feb 3, 2011, 04:29 PM
 
I will start things off with what I am thinking of doing:
  • Client-side Sync Software Used - Qdea's Synchronize! Plus
  • Server Software Used, if Any - Some sort of SFTP server
  • Syncing Totally Automated Once Set-up - Yes
  • Problems with Method, if Any - Not sure, but if I use an external hard drive attached to their Mac, I believe the volume would be viewable to them (perhaps I could change the permissions on the volume to be no access and create a a user on the computer for me?). I'm not worried about them having access to my data, but if they did it might cause issues with them in searching etc. Potential vulnerability if drive stolen.
  • Protocol/Type of Encryption Used in Transport - SFTP's encryption (don't know the type off-hand)
  • Type of Encryption Used in Storage, if Any - None right now, but perhaps I could use some whole disk encryption scheme, which would make me more comfortable. I could do sparsebundles, but then I'd have to re-mount those upon restart.
     
mduell
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Feb 3, 2011, 05:04 PM
 
Dropbox
Dropbox
Yes
Cost
HTTP
AES I think
     
schalliol  (op)
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Feb 3, 2011, 05:59 PM
 
A friend suggested Synk, and I emailed a rep. That person wrote back quickly with the following:
Synk would be a great solution for this.

If you have a way to directly reach the remote Mac, such as Back To My Mac, Dynamic DNS, or the like, SynkSharing would be the best way to set it up, since that would be the fastest, encrypt all traffic by default, and other similar benefits. If you have to go by way of a external server on the internet, it's not likely to be a 10.6-running Mac (nor would you have admin permissions on it), so you could use a more traditional AFP or SMB filesharing volume to hold the files.

Other than that, I'm not sure there's much more you'd need to know. Just tell Synk how to find the locations and turn it on. If you've got a slow network connection and a lot of traffic, then you can ask Synk to only back up at night, but that'll just depend on your configuration whether that's needed or not.

If you have specific questions trying to get it set up, let us know, we're happy to help…
     
schalliol  (op)
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Feb 3, 2011, 06:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
Dropbox
Do you just do the 50GB or pay for more? Any ideas what you'd do if you had more you wanted to back-up?
     
turtle777
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Feb 3, 2011, 07:23 PM
 
I use Twin.

Very flexible, very secure (AES-256 encryption), doesn't need any server-sided software.
Supports many protocols by default : FTP, SFTP, AFP, Amazon S3, WebDAV
Also, it works like TimeMachine, taking snapshots, and you can go back to any backup and restore it.

The only "issue" you can have is that when backing up large chuncks of data, any interuption of your internet connection borks the initial backup, and Twin does not just easily pick up where things went wrong until one initial backup is successful.
My strategy was to exclude certain folders of my backup directory, do the initial backup, and the subsequently remove one excluded folder after another.

I posted more details about HOW Twin backups are secure, even when transmitting over an insecure (open) connection:
http://forums.macnn.com/92/networkin...s-ftp-account/

-t
( Last edited by turtle777; Feb 3, 2011 at 07:29 PM. )
     
indigoimac
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Feb 3, 2011, 07:26 PM
 
I would run Hamachi and create the secure tunnel then you can run w/e software you want to do the sync (rsync on up) over afp, iscsi, sftp, etc -- there is some incentive to keep the networking shit and the sync programs separate in my opinion... for one, either one can be swapped out at anytime...

also, fwiw, i approve of doing the cross backup thing between people you know -- the online servies are nice, but potentially sketchy... and you're limited to your own upload (chances are) either way... so performance isn't really all that critical / you have the option to sneaker / ups net everything to start.
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turtle777
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Feb 3, 2011, 07:31 PM
 
Yes, Hamachi2 is a great way to create a VPN between multiple computers. Unfortunately, it requires OS 10.6 on all computers.

However (like you mentioned), Hamachi2 doesn't take care of the backup MECHANISM.
For that, I'd still recommend Twin.

-t
     
indigoimac
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Feb 3, 2011, 08:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Yes, Hamachi2 is a great way to create a VPN between multiple computers. Unfortunately, it requires OS 10.6 on all computers.
That continues to infuriate me slightly... Slink (Slinkware) was released before the logmein mac version of hamachi and is also, unfortunately, 10.6 only.

Twin looks pretty bitchin' -- has anyone looked at backing up time machine sparse images incrementally? Will Twin do that?
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schalliol  (op)
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Feb 3, 2011, 08:28 PM
 
Twin sounds really good and now available on the AppStore. Question: if you wanted to do an initial backup and then change it to remote, is it easy in the software to change? I assume you'd run a backup/series of backups and target the local drive first, move the drive to another computer, and then change in the software the destination. Doing that, Twin would realize that the destination has the necessary files and then just run an incremental backup, is that correct?

BTW, I read the secure/unsecure thread and wonder how that was so difficult. Of course you can either encrypt files or the transport mechanism and get the same result. VPNs are nice because you don't have to do anything special with any app/transmission, but if your apps are robust, creating a live connection is a pain! Of course it's nice to be doubly safe if data is especially sensitive.
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turtle777
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Feb 3, 2011, 09:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by schalliol View Post
Twin sounds really good and now available on the AppStore. Question: if you wanted to do an initial backup and then change it to remote, is it easy in the software to change? I assume you'd run a backup/series of backups and target the local drive first, move the drive to another computer, and then change in the software the destination. Doing that, Twin would realize that the destination has the necessary files and then just run an incremental backup, is that correct?
I have never tried it, but it should work.

Twin saves all necessary files in the destination directory, so it shouldn't matter HOW you connect to it (remotely or local).

Maybe you wanna shot the developer an email asking that questions, or search their FAQs.

-t
     
turtle777
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Feb 3, 2011, 09:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by indigoimac View Post
That continues to infuriate me slightly... Slink (Slinkware) was released before the logmein mac version of hamachi and is also, unfortunately, 10.6 only.
*sigh*

Same here.

For a while, I used the old CLI Hamachi on older systems (Tiger and Leopard), but it just became too unreliable.

Originally Posted by indigoimac View Post
Twin looks pretty bitchin' -- has anyone looked at backing up time machine sparse images incrementally? Will Twin do that?
Nope, I haven't tried that.

-t
     
mduell
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Feb 4, 2011, 01:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by schalliol View Post
Do you just do the 50GB or pay for more? Any ideas what you'd do if you had more you wanted to back-up?
I pay for 100GB, they have larger accounts.
     
slinkware
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Feb 4, 2011, 05:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by indigoimac View Post
That continues to infuriate me slightly... Slink (Slinkware) was released before the logmein mac version of hamachi and is also, unfortunately, 10.6 only.
Olof from Slinkware here. Slink actually supports 10.5. If you download Slink from the Mac App Store you need 10.6.6, but that is an Apple App Store requirement, and not a Slink one. Happy to elaborate.

--Olof
     
turtle777
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Feb 4, 2011, 06:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by slinkware View Post
Olof from Slinkware here. Slink actually supports 10.5.
Great. Has this always been the case ?

I thought I remembered that originally (when it came out), it only supported SL.

-t
     
indigoimac
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Feb 5, 2011, 04:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by slinkware View Post
Olof from Slinkware here. Slink actually supports 10.5. If you download Slink from the Mac App Store you need 10.6.6, but that is an Apple App Store requirement, and not a Slink one. Happy to elaborate.

--Olof
durrr... not powerpc was really what i meant -- same with hamachi. all my intels are running 10.6 the lone ppc is running 10.5 -- i get confused as to what characteristic keeps me from doing things on it.
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turtle777
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Feb 5, 2011, 04:31 PM
 
Yeah, that might have been my problem, too. I tried it under 10.5 with a PPC Mac mini.

-t
     
   
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