Online Cloud Backup vs. Backing up to a USB Drive.

A common question we receive is what are the differences between using an external USB drive and backing up to a cloud service online like ours. So we thought it merited a blog post.

Hardware vs. Software.

If you use a USB hard disk to backup you need to buy the hardware, you need to get a external drive which will cost you £50+ probably for one big enough to be useful. of course it depends on you backup strategy. If you use something like TiimeMachine on the Mac, then you’ll be wanting a drive at least as big as the drive on your computer you want to protect.

The big plus of a hard disk backup is that you can clone the entire disk and in the event your primary disk fails, you have everything including the Operating System backed up. So you should be able to either swap in the backup drive, or use it to boot from and maybe then resyore across.

With a online backup system like our CloudBackup service, we don’t backup the operating system just data that you want to protect. Most of our clients start by backing up a few directories of data, then expand it over time to include more and more directories of files. It is file based and does rely on the Internet as the transport mechanism for your backups.

The big plusses of software based online are that there is no external drive to spill coffee on, or knock onto the floor. In our case, the software based backup drive will never run out of space. With our solution, your data is stored encrypted in secure data centres, even the filenames are encrypted!

Local Speed Vs. Internet Speed

The disadvantage of cloud/online backup is that all your data has to be uploaded via the internet, at what ever upload speed you have available. Your backups go up to the data centre via an encrypted channel, but only as fast as your WAN connection can push it up. A USB drive of course is not limited this way, it’ll backup at whatever speed it can get through your USB port; which will be faster than an average web connection.

We address this of course, we push changes to files not full files, this saves bandwidth and of course the datacentres are well connected with speeds well in excess of the enduser connection speeds. If you are lucky enough to have a good upload speed, we adjust for that.

But USB does win on pure speed of backup, especially for that initial backup. What we find is that our clients often start by uploading 1 directory, then another and another and another. This way only relatively small amounts of data are pushed up in one hit at a time.

Cost up front vs. Pay for what you use.

If you use a USB drive, you need to buy that drive before you can use it. You need to buy one as big as you think you’ll need (you’ll guess wrong, you’ll need more). With cloud backup, you just use what you need, it does not run out of space. You don’t pay for the space you don’t use, just what you use. So if you only backup 100mb that is what you pay for, use 200mb you pay for that. As your data grows your bill does grow, but it is we find still normally less than what you would have paid for a nice big external disk.

The good thing about a cloud based system is that if you stop using it, you stop paying for it. You can’t return that USB drive to the shops when you have finished with it can you. We will happily remove all your data and stop billing you, you stop using the service; you stop paying.

We have been getting quite a bit of interest in the service lately, we still don’t know quite why, but we are not complaining. Hopefully this post helps answer some of those questions people have been asking in advance of them calling us out of the blue. (but don’t stop calling, it is always nice to have people call us rather than the other way around.)