Which is the best cloud backup service for the Mac?

May 10, 2011 5:57 AM

Which is the best cloud backup service for the Mac? I want a continuous, complete hard disk mirror of a single OS X computer (at around 1TB). A second computer is a bonus.

Arq and CrashPlan seem to be the leaders.

I also read positive things about Jungle Disk in this question back in March. How does it differ?

Others like Blackblaze fail Backup Bouncer tests which are said to be important for a complete HD mirror.

posted by Typographica to computers & internet (10 answers total)

I've heard good things about carbonite.
posted by jourman2 at 6:46 AM on May 10, 2011

Is pricing a concern? If you're talking about a full terabyte hard disk, storing that in a system like Arq is going to cost you about $93 per month, and that's just raw storage before figuring in any transfers or file updates.
posted by mikeh at 6:47 AM on May 10, 2011

Have you looked into the time machine? I've been very happy with mine.
posted by TheBones at 7:16 AM on May 10, 2011

Is pricing a concern?

Yes. Good point about Arq. I didn't price it all the way up to 1TB.

Have you looked into the time machine?

I want a remote solution that will get me a bootable mirror image of my disk for the quickest recovery after a crash.

I've heard good things about carbonite.

Carbonits fails all 20 of the Backup Bouncer tests.
posted by Typographica at 8:32 AM on May 10, 2011

Just a note, any cloud based solution should be additive to a local solution such as TimeMachine if you want a quick recovery.

Try downloading a 1TB file after a crash and see how quickly that happens (also note a lot of service providers are putting caps on your home bandwidth around 200GB).

I use BackBlaze with Time Machine and I have restored from BackBlaze once without a problem (except it took forever - this is when I figured out I need both). (Note I don't keep everything on BackBlaze, just my home directory - I back everything up to TimeMachine).
posted by bitdamaged at 8:38 AM on May 10, 2011

any cloud based solution should be additive to a local solution

Definitely. I clone my HD with SuperDuper every day. But I travel often, so need a second accessible source.
posted by Typographica at 9:26 AM on May 10, 2011

If you can hold off on this a little, Apple's iCloud service is coming very soon, which might provide a lot of the things you need with very good Mac integration.

(It might even be free, though probably not for 1TB)

In the mean time, since you're already cloning daily, can you clone to a portable hard disk as well (just add it to your SuperDuper rotation) and simply carry that when you travel. Low tech, yes, but you can't beat the price, speed or convenience. You don't even need internet.
posted by rokusan at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2011

One other thing to keep in mind is your upload speed. I was trying to do the same thing a few months ago. Even with the fastest available internet connection my ISP offers it was going to take over 6 months to upload just a portion of my photo archive that was less than 1TB.

After messing around with a few other things, I've ended up putting together a FreeNAS home storage server that will act as my main file server. I'm just going to back it up to external hard drives that'll I put in a rotation where I take them to the office.

To test your upload and see what it would take, sign up for a free trail of one of the services and just see how long their estimates for the initial backup are.

Good luck.
posted by StimulatingPixels at 11:00 AM on May 10, 2011

I edit video and the metadata isn't too important to me.

My system is BackBlaze along with DVD-R backups of source movies.
posted by wcfields at 11:53 AM on May 10, 2011

I use a synology raid box, which also acts as a time machine host, as well as backblaze.
posted by reddot at 5:43 PM on May 13, 2011