Online backup that supports proxies?

November 3, 2007 4:50 PM

I need an unlimited online backup service which offers proxy support...Any suggestions?

Hello all

I am looking for a decent online backup service. I'm aware of Carbonite and that is the one I would like to use ideally. However I recently started university and they require us to use a proxy to access the internet (we have to type a proxy config (PAC) file into our browsers). Carbonite doesn't support proxies, let alone PAC files!

I need to backup about 200gb worth (it's probably little bit less but just to be safe), therefore the pay-per-gb solutions (like MozyPro) are not great, I would ideally like to be paying about £50 a year at most. And ideally the client would natively support connecting via PAC files (or just using Internet Explorer's proxy settings) but I guess you could use a proxifier program like FreeCap (although I've tried FreeCap and for some reason it doesn't work (and it doesn't support PAC files).

So in summary:

"unlimited" backup
support for proxies

Please help! Any questions, you know what to do.

posted by edbyford to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Best answer: Try Jungle Disk.

In your PAC file there's a line that looks like:

return "PROXY proxy.myserver.com:80;"

Use that host:port in the Jungle Disk proxy configuration.
posted by dmd at 5:53 PM on November 3, 2007

I just backup to my Dreamhost account (currently at 450GB) with rsync and a cron job twice a day.
posted by cdmwebs at 6:22 PM on November 3, 2007

Oops, I meant to add:

Since it's rsync/ssh, the proxy shouldn't be a problem.
posted by cdmwebs at 6:23 PM on November 3, 2007

Response by poster: Does Jungle Disk have an automatic/scheduled backup system? Like Carbonite's software which constantly monitors certain folders for changes and then backs up the modified/added files only?

If not, does anyone know anything which does?

And I assume Amazon S3 is unlimited? I must say, the prices look very reasonable!
posted by edbyford at 6:44 PM on November 3, 2007

Response by poster: Can someone just confirm the figures I have for storage prices on Amazon S3?

I'm looking to store 20000mb (200gb) of data, and after the inital backup, upload about 1gb per month.

I checked on Jungle Disk's calculator and got $3.20 per month, but using Amazon's calculator got $0.40 per month!

It is 2am here, so I'm prob just going crazy... :)
posted by edbyford at 6:50 PM on November 3, 2007

Response by poster: Oops, meant to add:

Are there any good alternatives to Jungle Disk?

Also, I know rsync is a particularly efficient backup method as it only uploads the modified files. Does Jungle Disk use this?
posted by edbyford at 6:54 PM on November 3, 2007

n-thing JungleDisk. It does have an automated backup feature. You can select the folders and the frequency to backup automatically.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 7:57 PM on November 3, 2007

From this page at jungledisk.com: When automatic backup is configured, Jungle Disk will check for changed files and back them up automatically at the requested interval. [emphasis mine]

BTW, rsync is a command-line program that copies only the changed parts of files. If you want to use rsync instead of jungle disk's automatic backup, you can. Jungle Disk will setup a network drive on your computer that you can just drag and drop stuff to and from, so you can use nearly any backup program out there.
posted by philomathoholic at 8:11 PM on November 3, 2007

Response by poster: Oh, I get it now!

So is there something with Carbonite/Mozy type backup (fully automatic, resumable and always monitoring for changes etc.) that I could use with this?
posted by edbyford at 8:39 PM on November 3, 2007

Search AskMe for foldershare, sync toy, and anything else that comes up while searching for those. I don't know a lot about those, but they have been mentioned a lot around here, and I know they should be able to do what you want.
posted by philomathoholic at 8:57 PM on November 3, 2007

Sorry for piling on, but if any of these services work with Time Machine (the auto backup in MacOS 10.5), I'll come running with bells on. Do any of them even support Mac-style desktop mounting? Their web pages seem to be full of Windows config info only.
posted by rokusan at 8:22 AM on November 4, 2007

Time Machine doesn't support webdav natively, but there's FUSE and wdfs that you might be able to use.
posted by philomathoholic at 2:02 PM on November 4, 2007

20000mb (200gb)

Maybe you got different values because 200gb is 200000 mb.
posted by dmd at 2:17 PM on November 4, 2007