Quicken Online Backup?

I'd recommend Mozy - it's the same concept as the Quicken backup, first 2GB are free. Works great, true "set-and-forget" backup.

Quicken Online Backup isn't all that great. About the only good thing is that it integrates with Quicken. I tried it for a week or so and then cancelled it. You can't actually delete anything once you back it up. I backed up a non-password protected Quicken file and wanted to delete it, but there was no way. I contacted support and they confirmed you can't delete stuff on your own, only put stuff there. Not the most intuitive or convenient process. xDrive is another option, the first 2 gigs are free and you have full control over the content. My email service has unlimited storage, I just attack my backup files to a email message and do it that way...

Just completed a brief exchange on this topic with a user in another forum. User reported that QW's online backup is tied to the HD from which you initiate the service - sounds like a cookie with a code or similar. User tried but could not download backups to a new/different HD. This would preclude recovering from a HD failure. User did not contact support to see if there is a work-around in the event of a HD failure. Would seem to be a serious limitation to this online service.

I do, but my situation is a little different because I use Quicken 2007 on a Mac. I have an Apple ".Mac" account that provides 1G of on-line storage (called an iDisk). Quicken has a command that makes a backup to the .Mac file directly. It only takes about 20 seconds, and it works seamlessly. I like the security of an on-line backup that's independent of my hardware. I also use it to syncronize Quicken files between computers at two different sites.

Thanks for all your comments, everyone. I'm currently checking out Xdrive and Mozy. I like that Xdrive doesn't require a software client, and that free storage has been increased to 5GB, though I expect 2GB will be more than enough for my purposes. I haven't installed the Mozy client yet, but its description of security measures are quite reassuring. :-)

I've been looking at online backup services for quite a while now, and I'm amazed at the price difference. Some are free/inexpensive, while others are rather pricey.

Thx and Regards,

Margaret

R Walter wrote:

Does anyone else use Carbonite backup?

Any concerns/qualms about putting your info out on who knows whose storage drives? What happens if the storage keepers go belly up/get acquired? Where does their income stream originate from that they can afford gigs upon gigs for x number of users?

Jay (professionally paranoid) .

Actually yes, especially having been a computer network security professional, I *never* thought I'd even consider putting my private financial data out there on someone else's servers. But as I no longer have an office to which I can securely ftp my backups, I need another solution. And burning DVDs to store in my safe deposit box isn't cutting it. That's one reason why I asked about Quicken's online storage, rather than some of the others mentioned. Free makes me a bit nervous, but it seems like Mozy gets some pretty respectable reviews. I've heard Xdrive is good, but when I saw it's owned by AOL, I wasn't quite so interested. I'm currently trying Carbonite and am about to try Mozy....

Really when I think out it, businesses have been outsourcing IT (and thus backup) for years. It makes sense that a home market would evolve ... and that there will inevitably be some security breaches (um remember CD Universe and the credit card num leak of years ago?). I was pretty paranoid re backup, security and disaster recovery when I was working, and although what I run at home must seem like a fortress to many home users (should I bore with a description), I do need a simple way of safeguarding data that I simply can't afford to lose.

Regards,

Margaret

Newsgroup Reader wrote:

When I saw your message, I recalled hearing/reading about Carbonite, so I'm currently trying it out. In many ways, I like the nonintrusive interface, but it doesn't look like Carbonite does anything re version tracking, as does Memeo Internet Disk. Mind you, Memeo's support is non-existent, and it wasn't sufficiently reliable for my taste. When I installed Carbonite earlier today, it wanted to back up C:\Documents and Settings as well as "My Documents." Well, that's nearly 24GB of data! At Comcast's current upload speed, it will take a goodly time to complete that, and I'm not sure if Comcast will object to the constant trickle. Really, I wouldn't want to lose any of those 24G, and I do daily backups to a separate internal drive, an external drive, and weekly to a NAS. Still, all are in the same room of my house! I also wish I could get into my Carbonite store and simply delete files. Further, I just read on the Carbonite site that users will want to

*disable* Carbonite when we want to run defrag. Well.... I pay for Diskeeper, which runs when it feels like it, so this is another issue to consider.

Anyway, ~$50/yr for unlimited storage is pretty reasonable. Am trying Mozy next.

Regards,

Margaret

Some concerns, yes, but there are ways to alleviate them:

- anything that is truly confidential is password-protected/encrypted, even sitting on my machine at home. If somebody were to physically steal my computer, I'm not overly worried about them seeing something they shouldn't.

- Mozy uses an encryption scheme that they claim even prevents THEM from reading your data. Assuming that's true, I'm not overly concerned about somebody getting access to my backups. The way they do restores seems to add another layer of protection - you request the file that you want restored, they prepare that file as a download and then email you a confirmation, with a URL, that the file is ready.

- The online vendor of choice (currently Mozy) is not my primary backup. I have a dedicated Linux box on my network at home that runs BackupPC, monitoring every other machine on my network for changes. When new/modified files are detected, they are backed up to that central machine. The online backups serve as my "offsite" backup. If Mozy goes belly-up, then I'll move on to the current flavor of the month. There are a couple of published methods out there of using Amazon's S3 storage offering to do offsite backups, I've considered that option as well.

Margaret if it is just Quicken, why not a flash drive? In fact I bu my files with a flash drive. I don't bother backing up programs I have copies of and years ago thought about ghost etc but I really don't have anything in which it might be cheaper to buy a new pc, copy my files to the pc as well as load the few programs I have. Then again I'm not into music, photos, graphics. Don

I do use a flash drive, too. But I just back up my Quicken files as well as Thunderbird and Firefox profiles, plus my encrypted password database. I'm not looking to back up *all* my data, but I do make pretty heavy use of PaperPort, and in there, I have years of tax returns & supporting data, as well as important legal and medical docs, too. The minimum fits well within Mozy's free 2GB. I do have lots of photos, and I've been slowly digitizing my CD collection. Also, much of the software I purchase is shareware, some of which have key files, etc., so I wouldn't want to lose those. But this latter data could easily be burned to DVD and stored in my safe deposit box because it doesn't change that frequently. I guess I'm just looking for an off-site extra safeguard for critical data. Looks like Mozy will do the job for now. And should my backups go over the 2GB limit, it's $4.95/mo, which won't break my piggy bank. ;-)

Thx and Regards,

Margaret

You can currently buy very compact 80G hard drives that will fit in your pocket for about $78 delivered. I currently use a 3 tier strategy for backing up my critical data. For my Quicken data files I use Quicken on-line backup. At $9.95 a year you can't really go wrong. I also have a 500GB Maxtor NAS box that I have connected to my home network. I use the backup software that came with that to run background routines once a day that back up all my user data for both my home and work systems to the NAS drive. Then, about once a quarter I use the USB port on the NAS drive to connect one of my two 80GB Simpletech pocket drives and save my home PC data files onto it and put it in my safe deposit box at my local bank. I bought two of the drives so I just take the newly written drive with me to the bank, put it in the safe deposit box, and bring the other one home, then repeat every quarter or so. I get my safe deposit box free with my bank account so the whole solution is fairly inexpensive in the long run. So just for my quicken files I have 3 places, Quicken on-line backup, my NAS drive,and the drive in my safe deposit box. For all the rest of my files (I have lots of pictures and music), if my PC HD goes I have copies of everything on my NAS drive, and if , God forbid, my house burns down, I have backups in my safe deposit box. YMMV.

Mark