I’ve been looking for an online backup service for my home network (mix of linux and windows), and I thought SpiderOak was going to be the ticket. I tried it out for a few days but I’m disappointed by the experience.
I was pleased with the pricing ($10/mo for up to 100GB) and multi-platform support. There are other features, like multi-machine syncing and ‘ShareRoom’ public sharing that seem useful. But the product is has some glaring holes that make it unusable for me.
On windows, the client has to be running continuously for backups to occur, and it is both a memory and CPU hog — not something I want to leave running all the time. I was hoping for automatic setup as a service or something, or at least a very small-footprint process that runs continuously.
On linux, it’s the same story. Takes a lot of resources for what it does, plus it has to run continuously. It does provide a batch option (–batchmode) so you can call it via cron (same on windows). It’s not terribly surprising that I have to configure that, and it’s covered in the FAQs.
I was also disappointed that it automatically traversed mounted remote filesystems, including the sshfs mounts I maintain to my hosting provider and work. It was easy to de-select those from backup once I realized it (as long as I used the Advanced selection view), but it surprised me to find them in the backup set.
But the real issue that makes it a non-starter is security. The files are all encrypted in transit and in storage in the cloud, so that’s not the concern. The problem is that any files I backup on one machine are visible without a password (beyond the SpiderOak account password) on any other machine that uses the same account. So there’s no way I’ll use SpiderOak for my linux server system files and my personal stuff and have the client running on the kids’ computers as well.
I expect those problems will be solved at some point, and I’d be happy to try again. If I’m just missing something, I’d like to know that, too. But for now, I’ll continue to look and hope for an online backup service that works for heterogeneous home networks… And using dirvish to backup to external drives.
Regan | 06-Jan-11 at 5:00 am | Permalink
aha, it’s a bummer! it’s so painful when problems are endless. Actually, I faced a similar situation sometime back but I managed to come out it a friend’s help. I was looking for an online backup that works with my Mac and Windows. I found http://www.backuplineup.com that helped me narrow down my search. It has a list of popular online companies and also critically shows what each is best at doing. To my comparison, I picked Safecopybackup. Tried out the free 3GB account which worked so well for me and ordered for a paid account of 200GB for 50 bucks a year. You don’t have to pay for extra computers.
jeremy | 06-Jan-11 at 5:43 am | Permalink
Thanks for the tip. I looked at http://safecopybackup.com/ and it is Mac and PC only. I need linux support.
Silvia v.d.Laar | 06-Jan-11 at 11:05 am | Permalink
I found Updatestar Online Backup and very happy with this program: http://client.updatestar.com/de/onlinebackup/overview/
jeremy | 06-Jan-11 at 12:07 pm | Permalink
updatestar.com is Windows only. Leider geht dass nicht.
Anna, CloudBerry Lab | 10-Jan-11 at 6:30 am | Permalink
There is another option to backup data to cloud storage powered by Amazon S3. Check out CloudBerry Backup http://backup.cloudberrylab.com/ . It is onetime fee and the rest what you pay for Amazon S3. Besides, there is no proprietary data format and you can access your data using other Amazon s3 tools. Supports all Amazon S3 regions and Reduced Redundancy Storage.
jeremy | 10-Jan-11 at 9:22 am | Permalink
I should just mark these comments (updatestar and cloudberry) as spam, since you people obviously don’t bother to read the original post. I’m looking for a multi-platform solution, not windows-only.
Ramesh Karthik | 16-Jul-11 at 10:36 am | Permalink
I was about to give a try to this ervice when I came across your post.
> From their web site what I learn is that Spideroak can both backup as well as sync many systems. In order for sync to work it had to be this way.
Can you tell me whether you want a seperate process for sync as well as for backup?
I’m using a single system only. So, I might have misunderstood your please, If so please explain me
jeremy | 18-Jul-11 at 8:32 am | Permalink
@Ramesh: I have no need for a sync service, I’m only interested in a backup solution that works across all the systems in my home network.
himselfv | 29-May-13 at 2:37 pm | Permalink
So I’m not the first one who thought of this! Should have guessed, huh. I’m in the same boat; I mailed their support but got some generic “No, we can’t help you goodbye”. In the end, I’m just using two accounts, one for each security context. I figured I don’t really need to have backups synced to my home PC 24/7 (althought it would have been nice), and if I ever want to access those I can run another SpiderOak under a different user.