Canadian Broadband → Backing up to friend's computer

I'm looking for PC software that will allow me to easily and automatically (once set up) back up to a relative's computer in a different city through the Internet. Windows Live Sync used to do the job a couple of years ago, but MS "simplified" things and removed the peer to peer backup and moved it to the cloud with SkyDrive.

My requirements:

- automated backup of particular folders on a PC (pictures/home video)
- scheduled backup windows (i.e. 2 am to 2 pm only)

I've tried CrashPlan (which in theory has all I need), however it is stuck on "Waiting for Connection" and I have been unable to get it to work after many hours of effort.

Is there anything out there that would work for this kind of backup?

Is it important that it reside on a local disk? BackBlaze is often cited as being a comparable service to CrashPlan (although there are differences in what they try to accomplish).

$5 a month, unlimited everything for one computer. Their blog is fun to read because they often post stories about their grand adventures at securing petabytes worth of cheap hard disks, like getting everybody on their staff banned from every local costco :P

EDIT: Ooh, their blog now has the scoop on their Storage Pod 3.0! Must read.

I had problems getting CrashPlan to work as well. From what I can tell (based on a very small amount of testing and looking at packet capture logs), this is how it works:

- Start up and listen on configured port (4242 by default)
- Connect to CrashPlan server to tell it you're online
- CrashPlan server tries to connect to your listening port
- If it can connect, things seem to work fine
- If it can't connect (which it couldn't in my case, because my firewall was set to only accept connections from my backup peers), then it ignores your configured listening port and binds to a random port instead.
- Then it tries to use UPnP to open that random port on your router (which failed in my case, because UPnP wasn't enabled)

So if you have a restrictive firewall and don't have UPnP enabled, then you're probably running into the same problem I did. I decided to whitelist the Code42's IP range (50.93.246.0/24) for port 4242, and things just started to work after that. The other option would have been to enable UPnP, and that might have solved the problem too but I didn't try.

The really weird thing is that the problem was intermittent. It would backup fine for a couple days, then not connect for a couple days. At one point it went 10 days without connecting, and that's when I finally looked into it and found the above solved the problem.

Symform

I've explored all options, and this made the most sense for me. They've recently added the option of sync'ing to another PC.

By far the best cloud-backup solution on the market, IMO. And it's free to boot, provided you donate some free HD space from a PC that's relatively on throughout the week (doesn't have to be days on end either - a few days gap here and there is fine).

So, with Symform, I can back up my data by either donating 20TB of disk space or paying them $3000 a month.

With Crashplan, I can back up my data by paying $4 per month (Backblaze doesn't support Linux, but if they did, it'd be about the same price).

Symform seems insanely expensive at $0.15 per month per gigabyte. Even Dropbox is significantly cheaper than that, and Dropbox is priced as a frequent-access syncing solution, not an archival backup system!

Interesting ideas out there. I'm looking more for a peer to peer solution (where I am backing up to a particular person and they are backing up to me) rather than cloud based solutions.

Maybe it's being cheap, but I'd rather avoid monthly costs if I can as would the person I'm sharing with. We're talking 300 GB or so, which comfortably fits on my existing hard drives and will fit on theirs as well.

If there is a solution where we can see each other's files that would be ok too, they are just family pictures and videos that we are looking to back up.

I may have to try plug away and figure out Crashplan as it seems to do most of what I need, just giving me massive headaches trying to connect the computers to each other through the Internet.

Sounds like you're on Windows

Setup a ssh server on both ends. Lots of good free ssh server software out there. I personally use Bitvise »www.bitvise.com/winsshd
Or setup a VPN connection and you can just "copy" your data across.

Create a batch script to copy / update your data to the backup server.

Use task scheduler to set when to run.

This solution has zero cost.

In your particular case, perhaps Symform isn't the best solution.

Granted, I'm curious to see a show of hands of how many people actually have 10TB of data that they need backed up.

Mark, I strongly suggest giving Symform a try. Simply install the client on both machines, login using the same account credentials, and specify which folders from which machines you want sync'd. The whole "free HD space donation" concept only applies if you ever decide to back up to the "cloud" (in which case, your data is encrypted and fragmented into 96 pieces, and sent to PCs all over the world... akin to torrents).

Even for a normal computer, Symform is overpriced. Say I just want to back up my desktop computer's storage. 320GB (worst case, my drives aren't full). This is much more reasonable. Let's be generous because BackBlaze and CrashPlan normally don't back up the Windows directory and such, let's just say 200GB to back up. I think most people can easily go over that with their music/documents/photos/etc.

200 * $0.15 = $30/mth to back up, wheras CrashPlan and BackBlaze are both at or under five bucks a month...

Symform is substantially overpriced for anything over about 25GB. When your backup service stats costing more than Dropbox (100GB for $10 a month), you know it's overpriced.

Amazon's S3 "glacier" storage costs $0.01 per gigabyte. How the heck does Symform justify charging 15x that, when even *sync* providers (who have WAY higher costs than a simply backup provider and can't rely on cheaper archival storage like Glacier) don't charge 15x that?

Gus, I think you're missing the main point of what Symform is truly about here.

If one has enough free, disposable HD space available for 'donation' to the Symform cloud, then backups can essentially be had for free for an unlimited amount of systems, provided they all use the same login credentials.

I'll agree with you that without actual donation, Symform's value proposition as a cloud-based backup service is essentially reduced to nil. My train of thought about all of this was: we're already paying for internet service, we've paid for our hard drives, so why not utilize them both to take advantage of a free service?

In the case of the OP's requirements:
- no HD space donations needed
- ANY folder can be backed up
- bandwidth scheduling can be set accordingly
- easy to use
- free

Thanks for the suggestions.

Looks like I could go ssh server which will not be dependent on a third party changing/shutting down their service, but involving more configuration work or Symform which will be easier to configure but reliant on a third party service.

FWIW, I use Amazon's S3 Glacier Storage and CloudberryLab as the backup client. last AWS bill was $5.38 for a month of about 1TB of storage ; mix of Glacier and regular. Just started switching. Only caution is ISP upload caps. I'm on a grandfathered unlimited plan so not worried.

I use Syncrify for backing up a number of folders daily from my work server directly to my NAS. This is a very flexible and multi platform solution, and there is a free version too.

after initial backup it only backs up files that are changed or new.

Many IISPs are moving to unlimited uploads even on plans with a cap, since it doesn't cost them anything when most of their usage is downstream (they pay for the highest peak usage of either direction on their GigE or 10GigE lines). Plus many have unlimited off-peak usage.

I was going to reccommend rsync / DeltaCopy, but Syncrify is their new hot stuff, so there you go.

I looked at Symform. It looks ok, but it doesn't give an option to "shut off" all bandwidth use during the business day. It will still run through and use 2.5% of available bandwidth, which is something I'd rather avoid.

For ssh server, I dabbled for a little bit with that. How does it work with dynamic IP addresses? I only have control over one of the backup PC's, so when the address changes I will have to reconfigure.

Syncrify seems to be the same thing. Is there a way to get it to login on the Internet to find the address it needs to link to or do I have to have a static address for it. In the settings it looks like it needs something static.

I'm leaning more towards something like BackBlaze/Crashplan online.

Does BackBlaze work on more than one computer with the same account? If I need separate accounts I think I'll go with Crashplan (if I can use it from multiple locations).

I miss the old Windows Live Sync/Foldershare program. It was so simple to use and did exactly what I needed.

For dynamic IPs, I recommend »freedns.afraid.org/

Set up an account there (free) and set up a dynamic DNS entry on one of the free servers there (free). It won't update as often as you might like since you're using it for free, but it will do the job. Just SSH to the dynamic DNS entry and you're good.

If you haven't totally given up on crashplan:

2 things I can think of that may be causing problems.

1. UPnP not turned on the routers (To rule out the routers entirely connect both computers directly to the internet with no router and see if they work.

2. The disk you are backing up to has a "dirty bit" turned on. This happens frequently with my external drive. The only way to fix it is with a chkdsk /r.

BackBlaze is $5 per computer per month, or a bit cheaper if you prepay a bigger period.

www.syncplicity.com should do what you need. its free if your useing 2 computers

Syncrify works fine as long as you configure a Dynamic DNS account on the router of the pc that has the server component it, and you point the client to the dynamic dns address...

Thanks for all the replies. I will have to bookmark this thread for future reference.

I managed to get Crashplan to work. I had to put my PC in DMZ in my router, but once the connection was made, I was able to put it back behind the firewall with the ports forwarded in the router and Crashplan has been able to reconnect and sync. I'm doing a scheduled sync tonight so I'll see what happens with it.

Now that it is working, fingers crossed, the family member I'm syncing too is disappointed that he won't be able to see the files I send (they are just family pictures and video)....

This is what he gets for now, if I decide later that I want to change it, then I will look into some of the other options.

I really like the idea of ssh and not relying on third party solutions to make it work, but that's for another day I think.

The blog was an entertaining read, however it does make me somewhat weary of storing my data with a company that's relying on Uncle Bob to pick up a couple of HDD's at Costco on his way home from work.

Having said that, their storage pods are very cool! (you know you're a geek when you can say that!)

They're relying on that for cost reasons, but only since the Thailand floods; costs have still not come back down to the point where they were before. Before the floods, they didn't shuck externals, they got them through suppliers. It's actually a pretty ingenious way for a company like them to keep costs under control during a crisis in which the primary resource their company relies upon triples in price overnight.

A "family shared" folder has been suggested be a few people on the crash plan boards. The response from crashplan was basically good idea, maybe oneday, but for now we are focused on the backup portion of the program.

»www.bitcasa.com/

Anyone deal with this company yet? prices seem almost to good to be true. $69 a year for unlimited space.

Another new option that looks fairly promising: »labs.bittorrent.com/expe ··· ync.html