Well, I hope all you smart young  NMD and Anim students have been listening to the repeated advice from your Uncle stío and Auntie Alex, to back up and keep copies of all your work. Because, last week, while we were on holiday some  fuc..  twa..  ars..  clever person from IT decided to completely wipe every computer in room 222 –without even consulting with us first.

So, anything not backed up is “gone like the snows of last winter”, if you’re feeling poetical about it [which I’m not!]

a week or so ago, i posted about a couple of recommended options for backing up your mac. one of the options i mentioned was using amazon S3 storage, in conjunction with a ‘front-end’ application to configure the backup options on your mac. at the time, i recommended arq, as my preferred application for the purpose, as i was currently trying it out, after many years of using [but not particularly liking] jungledisc and, on first impressions, thought arq was the better app.

since i wrote that post, my opinion has changed; although arq provides a much more mac-like interface for configuring your S3 backups, this comes at the price of genuine configureability [is that a word?] and transparency.  so, until such time as the developer of arq fixes some glaring problems with it, i am henceforth un-recommending arq and going back to using jungledisc.

to highlight why i’ve made this U-turn, consider the following:

when you tell arq which files and folders you want it to backup and then set it running, you get a nice mac-like interface, with progress bar, telling you how the backup is proceeding.  but [and it turns out to be a big but!] arq does not tell you which particular file it is backing up at the time. jungledisc on the other hand [via its logging window] gives you chapter and verse on every metaphorical twitch of an eyelid that the app makes.

now, arq’s lack of a file-by-file analysis of what is actually uploading might seem a bit of a non-issue to you.  after all, you’ve told it what files and folders to backup.  why do you need to know in which particular order, or at which particular time each individual file gets to the front of the queue?

well, you don’t.  at least not for the first backup.  the problems arise when arq runs subsequent incremental backups, which are supposed to only upload new stuff and the changed portions of any files already in your backup, thus keeping subsequent uploads [and your amazon S3 costs] to a minimum. the big problem is that arq’s backup logic seems to me to be broken. 

when i ran my second backup, a day or two after my first big backup had finished, i was surprised to see that arq was planning to upload over 2GB worth of supposedly ‘new stuff’. now, i know i’m a pretty productive guy but i dinnae edit video that often and i rarely work on large print-sized graphics, so i was pretty amazed that arq reckoned i’d created 2GB worth of ‘something’ in a mere day or two.

digging about on the arq support forums, i found a few other folks pondering over similar mysteries and the consensus of opinion seemed to be that the problem lay with the user ‘cache’ and ‘tmp’ folders, which hold various temporary files and cached stuff, which you dinnae want to be backing up.

so, back i went to arq and removed the cache and tmp folders from the list of what to backup.  i then ran the backup again and found that this time arq was intending to backup a still puzzlingly large, but not so alarming 500MB.  so, i let arq do it’s stuff and hoped that this was just a one-off.

then, a couple of days later, i ran my arq backup again and, this time, arq announced its intention to backup over 700MB of data! 

again, there was no way that, in the space of a couple of days, i’d generated three-quarters of a GB of new data.  and that, my friends, is where arq’s lack of info provision became a show-stopper for me.  if i’d still been using jungledisc, it would have generated a list before beginning its backup, showing me every single file it intended to backup and the size of each one.  i could have tracked down the mystery 700MB in no time.  with arq, i had no information at all, except knowing that somewhere amongst the files and folders i’d selected for backup, there was allegedly 700MB worth of changes or new stuff.

annoying enough even if it were just a piece of desktop software but, given that every upload arq makes is adding to my amazon S3 storage costs, there is no way i’m going to effectively write a blank cheque for these charges whilst arq hides behind a veil of secrecy.

it’s back to jungledisc for me.  fugly, a bit fiddly to setup and it disnae have a nice boat for an icon [which is alway a plus for me - remind me to write a review on neooffice some time!]. but, it gets the job done and provides you with more information than you need, every step of the way.

jungledisc backup progress window. fugly but informative

jungledisc log window. more info than you can shake a stick at!

IMPORTANT: when jungledisc first came out a few years back, i bought a lifetime license for the software. so, i own the jungledisc software outright and only pay directly to amazon S3 for my storage fees. since then, jungledisc has been taken over by rackspace who have changed the way it all works; instead of buying the software outright, you now pay a monthly fee of $3 per month to use jungledisc PLUS your amazon S3 fees on top.

personally i think this is a crappy way to do things and am glad i got my jungledisc license back in the good old days.  so, whilst i am now un-recommending arq and returning to jungledisc myself, i wouldnae go so far as to  actively recommend jungledisc to others. not with their current rip-off pricing structure.

last thursday, NMD & animation students & staff went for a pint or six after college. 

being the nerdy geeks we are, the subject of  backing up your computer came up in conversation and i said i’d write something about it on the blog. so here it is:

first off, if you’re not backing up your work, you’re an eejit.  with so much of our lives stored in digital format these days, it’s madness to not have it backed up somewhere in case you fry your hard drive or have your computer stolen.

the most straightforward method is to use an external hard drive as a backup or to burn backups to DVD.  i used to do this myself; i have about half a dozen old hard drives and a drawer full of CDs and DVDs at home, with work backed up from the last decade or more. the trouble with backing up in this way tho’ is that, as time goes by, the size of the ‘stuff’ we want to backup gets bigger and bigger and –if you’ve bought an actual hard drive for backing up on– your storage capacity gets, relatively speaking, smaller and smaller.

a small fraction of my old backups:

to illustrate this; the reason i have [as mentioned above] half a dozen hard drives and a drawer full of discs backed up is that –way back in the black & white days, when i bought my first mac– it came with a whopping 2GB hard drive. this i supplemented at the time with a similarly gargantuan 250MB external hard drive.

also, back in those days, rewriteable DVDs were yet to be invented so, when burning stuff to disc, we were limited to 640MB CDROMs.  hence the proliferation of archived discs and drives that i’ve accumulated over the years. even backing up that miniscule 2GB hard drive took 4 CDROMS.  bulk-wise these old backup discs and drives take up several square feet of storage space in my flat. capacity-wise, most of that stuff would probably fit on an average sized hard drive, by today’s standards.

i also remember about four or five years ago, buying an 80GB external firewire hard drive to use as a backup. at that time my laptop’s hard drive was 20GB, so 80GB seemed like copious amounts of extra storage. however, 80GB nowadays would start to feel pretty cramped, merely after installing the system software and a handful of applications.

apart from the built-in redundancy of buying actual hardware for your backups, there is the added problem of avoiding keeping your backup in the same place as the computer you are backing up.  for example; if you keep your external hard drive at home, along with your computer and suffer a fire, flood or robbery then chances are your backup will be lost, along with your original data.  the recommended thing to do is keep your backup hard drive in a separate location eg. at work, college or at a friend’s house. however this is a major pain in the arse as, having to physically shunt your backup drive from place to place each time you want to use it, is likely to mean you’ll not bother to backup as often as you should, in the first place.

so, what’s the answer?

well, contra-intuitive as it may seem, i recommend using the intarwebs to backup your data [or more specifically that region of the intarwebs known as ‘the cloud’].

even a couple of years ago, i’d have laughed at the idea of storing my backup data somewhere that needed an internet connection to access it and that would obviously involve paying someone to store it.  however, i’ve changed my mind of late and am now using ‘the cloud’ exclusively as my main backup.  here are the reasons why i think it now makes sense to do so:

1. cost:  internet storage is getting cheaper year-on-year as hard drive capacities get bigger and more and more companies are making cloud storage available. i currently use amazon S3 for my backup storage and usually end up paying somewhere between $10 - $15 [about £6 - £10 in real money] a month to store over 80GB of files.  twice in the past couple of years since i started using S3, the cost per GB for this online storage has actually gone down and i can only see it continuing to do so as the years go by.
2. accessibility: almost everyone has access to high speed internet connections these days. whether at home, work or in your local wifi enabled café or pub. so the fact that your data resides on ‘the cloud’ disnae make it as inaccessible as it might have been a couple of years ago. in fact in some ways it makes it more accessible, because you can get to it anywhere and using any device which can connect to the internet, rather than needing to physically attach a backup device to your computer.
3. reliability: if you choose one of the ‘big boys’ for your cloud backup, you can be pretty confident that your data is going to be safe and be around for the forseeable future. that’s one of the reasons i use S3.  amazon guarantee 99,99% reliability for your data storage and, last time i looked, they didnae seem to be in any danger of going out of business any time soon.

OK. presuming you’ve stuck with me thus far, how do you jump upon the great cloud storage bandwaggon? 

well, i have two recommendations for you. one is a bit more user friendly, the other is fiddlier to setup, but cheaper.  i use both these services:

DROPBOX

dropbox is probably the most elegant and most mac-friendly cloud backup system out there. in essence, you setup a ‘dropbox’ folder on your computer and anything you save into that folder gets automagically synced to your dropbox in the cloud, whenever there’s an intarwebs connection available.

your dropbox appears like a regular folder in the finder:

if you’ve got more than one computer, you can install dropbox on both and anything saved into your dropbox folder will be available on both computers and also backed up on the cloud. 

add to that the fact that there’s also a dropbox mobile app for iphone, android or blackberry and you can even get access to your ‘stuff’ when you’re not near any of your computers.

dropbox offer 50GB storage for $99/year [£64] or 100GB for $199 [£128]. however you can also get a 2GB dropbox for free which, whilst it willnae be big enough to backup all your stuff, at least allows you to try dropbox out and keep your most important data safe. signup link below:

signup linky for free 2GB dropbox

[disclaimer: if you sign up for a free 2GB dropbox using my link above , i receive an extra 250MB storage for referring you. however, you will also receive an extra 250MB storage for having been referred by me. so everyone’s a winner!]

AMAZON S3

the big advantage of amazon S3 storage is in the cost. i cannae give you an exact figure for how much S3 storage will cost you because the pricing structure is quite complex, depending on how much you’re storing, how much uploading and downloading you’ve done that month and even where on the planet you’ve chosen to store your S3 data. that said however, convoluted pricing aside, S3 is much cheaper than other cloud storage offerings. [check out the pricing structure here].

in fact companies like dropbox actually build their service on top of S3, by providing a friendlier interface at the cost of adding a bit of a markup on top of the original S3 pricing.

and it’s the ‘friendly interface’ [or lack thereof] that’s the main problem with amazon S3; basically the service offers you dirt cheap storage on amazon’s servers and that’s about it. there’s a pretty basic web-based interface that allows you to manually upload files to S3 from your browser, but for any kind of automated backup, you’re going to have to look at one of the 3rd party applications which allow you to access your amazon S3 storage in a much more user-friendly way. 

there are several such apps about.  i’ve tried a few of them in my time but the one i’m currently using and which i’d recommend as the most mac-friendly is arq. arq is not free.  it costs $29 [£19] [30 day free trial available] but, in the long run, i’d say it’s the wiser option as you’ll make that amount back soon enough by using arq as a frontend to your own S3 storage –as opposed to using a service like dropbox, where you’re paying a premium to use their interface on top of their S3 storage account. 

NOTE: my opinions on using arq have changed. see this post for the latest.

at the end of the day it comes down to a question of whether you’d rather pay slightly more for an out-of-the-box backup system [dropbox], or pay less but have a bit more setting up to do for yourself [S3+arq].

of course, i’m always available to advise and/or help you set things up –whichever method you decide to go for.