Macworld 2011: Dolly Drive syncs Time Machine to the cloud, creates bootable backup

Backups are insurance, but insurance against what?

> The reality is most people (myself included) keep the external hd
> and the computer in the same geographic area . . .thus making it
> somewhat pointless.

No, not pointless at all, you were protecting your data against the rather likely occurrence of a drive failure. But you were not protecting your data from physical theft.

> You might actually be better off using an application like Transmit
> to do automatically scheduled backups of your Time Machine drive
> to your cloud location.

You're right that would be so easy, but you can't. TM uses hard links to compress the size of each backup. (If a file hasn't changed and a copy of it is in a previous backup, TM puts a hard link to the copy in the backup.) Copying a hard linked file gets you the file, not the link. This is why TM is fast and efficient.

So a solution like dolly is pretty cool. They have a way of saving the link rather than the data. I assume they also have a way to validate that the file the link points to is stored on dolly's servers otherwise the link is meaningless. It would be cool to be able to configure dolly in a way that
minimizes bandwidth use, and yet still guarantees that say dolly is never more that 1 month or X weeks out of date. Dolly could then use that time window to catch up continuously.

I'd put a vote in for CrashPlan, which I recently subscribed to. Here's some details you might not have considered yet:
-CrashPlan backs up all Mac HFS+ specific file streams (like file label colors, folder icons, etc.). Check this page:
http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/index.php#pricing
... in the section called "Backup Bouncer Test Results". CrashPlan failed a lot of the tests initially, but have since stepped up their HFS+ compliance.

-The CrashPlan application is free and lets to backup to local storage in addition to online. It's better than Time Machine because it has data deduplication (ie: don't store the same file block twice), and encryption.

-Someone mentioned why Dropbox doesn't match Dolly Drive's prices. This is because Dropbox is totally solid, has an amazing sync algorithm (unmatched anywhere else), full data deduplication, and is completely realtime. There is no comparison of Dropbox to any of these services. FYI, all your 250-MB referrals turn into 500 MB as long as you're a paid subscriber.

-CrashPlan doesn't limit you to the laughable 250 GB that this service does.

Avoid it like the plague. There is no cancel option once you part with the money and a number of us can't get a connection. They also keep robbing off with wanting screenshots for "support".

I think this service sounds like a great deal. The only concern I have with a new or smaller company is the fear they could go belly up, or don't have plenty of redundant back-up in different geographic locations, etc. But other than that type of concern, it sounds like a solid Mac off-site backup solution at a very attractive price.

I am just a bit peeved at the fact i cannot select only my Music folder in iTunes and there is no option to cancel the account!

Seems promising, especially in case of theft (of your computer and/or your external drive used for backups).
But... the *major* drawback is this one :
I've just signed in for this service... to discover there is currenly absolutely *no way* to cancel it.
A user mentioned it in their support forum.
Hope this will be fixed soon as it sounds completely illegal, at the moment.

The reason you need a service like this is simple. And I am living proof of this so take note:

I had my computer stolen.
I backed up my computer to an external hard drive
My external hard drive was sitting next to my computer.
It was also stolen.

The reality is most people (myself included) keep the external hd and the computer in the same geographic area . . .thus making it somewhat pointless.

The one other item noone has talked about is the cloning service. I think this is just as valuable if not more so then the back up service.

I am a fan! Signed up last night and it is backing up nicely. Not slowing things down a bit. This is the cloud solution I've been waiting for!

Wouldn't be surprised if the great big data storage facility Apple just built is for something like this...

My problem with all of these services is that most people have a VERY small amount of personal data on their computers. I personally keep all of my documents encrypted in Evernote, so the only things that would need backing up are my iPhoto and iTunes libraries. The iTunes library is simply impossible to do as it's nearly 4 TB (I have a lot of video) on a Drobo. It would take months to back all that up to the cloud, not to mention paying a yearly service fee. The iPhoto library though is worth backing up, but I think a service like DropBox might be better simply because I could set it up to sync across multiple machines.

I don't need/want all of my user data to get saved to the cloud. I don't feel the need to pay for backing up my apps since I can just download them again… Services like this just seem like a ripoff once you really start looking at cloud alternatives.