Brian Pozar

As a father, my photos and videos of my daughter are some of my most valued possessions. As an IT person, I am intimately aware of how often hard drives crash. At work, I have designed comprehensive disaster recovery plans and backup systems. Yet, for my personal computing uses, I have always been lazy about backups. Not anymore; preserving my family memories is just too important.

I did buy an external hard drive a few months ago but a fire, flood, or theft would wipe out both the computer and external drive. So I have been looking into online backup solutions to supplement the external hard drive.

I narrowed down my choices at first to services called SugarSync, Box.net, Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy.

By my calculations, I need approximately 500GB of storage to backup everything I don’t want to lose. I do not have 500GB of photos and home movies but since I am doing this, I might as well include my MP3 collection and documents. 

SugarSync is the highest rated service and I can see why. It brings the most features in one package. You can backup, sync, access, and share your files easily. It is really a full blown cloud-storage solution rather than simply a backup service. Unfortunately, for $5 a month, I can only backup 30GB. They charge $40 a month for 500GB, which is more than I want to spend. $500 a year is a lot, especially considering the possibility that I might not ever need to restore my files from the online service.

Box.net looks to be a great business solution for file sharing and collaboration. In fact, I am going to have the person in my department responsible for our Salesforce.com installation look into integrating Box.net so we can get away from Salesforce’s low storage quotas. Unfortunately, $10 a month only gets me 10GB of storage. So that option is out.

I have used Dropbox for awhile now, it is great for synchronizing files back and forth between work and home. It keeps me from having to use a flash drive or FTP to move my work back and forth (I don’t lug a laptop around). But I can only get 50GB for $10 a month or 100GB for $20 a month. This also is not a great backup solution because it only backs up the files in one folder on your computer. But I highly recommend getting the free account which gives you 2GB. You can access the files with your iPhone too.

Mozy and Carbonite are very similar services with nearly identical pricing. $5 a month gets unlimited storage. I’m sure Carbonite is a fine solution but I get the feeling that Carbonite is focusing more on its business solution than on its consumer product just by looking at the two websites. I simply wasn’t as impressed as I was with the next service, Mozy.

Mozy lets you configure bandwidth and CPU utilization limits and also backs up to your external hard-drive for you. $5 a month for unlimited storage at Mozy as well. This service seems like the best option for a cost-effective online backup. Mozy is owned by EMC, a major player in the enterprise storage market.

* Tip for Mozy. Make sure you change the “Videos” backup set by right-clicking on it and removing the 50MB limitation or any large videos you have will not be backed up. Carbonite has similar defaults that are annoying but understandable.

Recommendation:

• For online backups, use Mozy
• For synchronizing files between multiple computers, use Dropbox
• If money is no object, look into SugarSync.

Okay, this is a simple item that many people know about but I’m just doing this to get my feet wet. I have a feeling I’m going to post simple things for a while and then get more advanced; I just don’t want to leave anybody out in the lurch. If you want a good homepage, make sure to click iGoogle on the top right of the Google.com and set that as your browser’s home page. You can customize it with lots of great “gadgets.” But you’ll need a google account if you don’t have one already. Sign up for one and get a free Gmail account at the same time. If you don’t use Gmail, its time to make the move. Not only is it easy to use but their spam-filtering is superb.

Instructions for changing your homepage:

Google Chrome - Wrench icon > Options > Basics

Firefox - Tools > Options > General

Internet Explorer - Tools > Internet Options > General

Recommendation:

• Use Gmail instead of Hotmail, Yahoo, or anything else for your personal email. It blows the competition away and has virtually no spam.
• Use iGoogle for your home page. Although Yahoo and MSN aren’t terrible if you want to stick with them.

Greetings,

My name is Brian Pozar and this marks something like the sixth time that I have attempted to create a blog. Maybe Tumblr, which thus far seems very cool, will finally provide enough impetus to keep me going beyond the first 2-3 posts. If I can get into a habit of regular posting, that would be a huge milestone (if you are reading this a year from now, you’ll know if I succeeded or failed. WordPress, MovableType, and Blogger never quite made it easy enough for me to blog with same minimal amount of effort that Facebook and Twitter demand. Hopefully,Tumblr will make life that easy.

A bit of background on myself. I live in the Central Valley of California with my lovely wife and delightful daughter. I’m the Director of IT for a $120MM manufacturing company. I am a former Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), former Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), and I have my BS in Business Administration; soon to begin work on my MBA. I’m also a private pilot and love my motorcycle and guitars.

The purpose of my blog is to share things that I find to be of considerable significance in either life, information technology, or other areas of interest. My hope is that similar-minded people will find me, learn from what knowledge I have, as limited as it may be, and perhaps teach me something as well.

What I promise to try to avoid is mindless dribble and current events despite how much I enjoy funny videos and political upheavel. The blogosphere is filled with commentators; my goal is to provide information that has long-term meaningfulness. As such, I will be providing recommendations at the bottom of each blog post. The recommendations will in some way be a result of my experience or research that you can benefit from and circumvent having to do it on your own. If you have ever thought to yourself, “why didn’t somebody tell me that?!” Well, that’s what I’ll be trying to do. 

Recommendation:

• This brings me to my first piece of advice for anybody involved in web development or marketing. Bookmark the following site and add its RSS feed to your iGoogle home page: http://www.smashingmagazine.com. One of their excellent articles led to my rediscovery of Tumblr today