Using Amazon S3 for hard drive backups

After reading Baratunde’s heart-wrenching post about losing an entire terabyte of data, including recordings of his late mother, I decided it was time for me to investigate some backup solutions.

I half-assedly make DVD backups of my blog data and important files. But that stuff changes so frequently that a DVD system is really inadequate. An external hard drive is great for on-site backups, but hard drives and DVDs are subject to the same vulnerabilities. What do I do if:

the hard drive fails or the DVD gets scratched?
the hard drive gets lost or stolen?
the hard drive or DVD gets destroyed in a fire?
I do some dumb sh*t like accidentally knock over a glass of wine onto the hard drive.

Yeah, an external storage solution is so the right idea.

Enter Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service, part of the company’s web services offerings. Until recently, the program was only useful for developers. S3 uses REST and SOAP to send and retrieve data. If you didn’t know what to do with either of those, good luck taking advantage of the service.

Since S3’s launch, however, a few companies and developers have created easy-to-use interfaces for interacting with S3. Now just about anyone can take advantage of S3 to store data.

Why would you do such a thing? Three words: S3 is cheap. You can calculate just how cheap. Simply pay for what you use. And unlike with most online backup services, you have the added ability to manipulate your data using standard protocols. There’s some serious media serving potential there, particularly if coupled with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

For storing and retrieving data you have quite a few options. Here are four of my picks:

JungleDisk

Operating system(s): Mac, Windows, Linux
Cost: $20; unlimited installations
Basics: Mounts like a disk drive, allowing you to easily upload and download files.

S3 Backup (Beta version)

Operating system(s): Windows
Cost: Free for now. Beta versions have set expiry dates.
Basics: Easy-to-use upload/download utility. Interface operates much like any other FTP software.

Transmit 3.6

Operating system(s): Mac OS X
Cost: $29.95
Basics: Fabulous FTP software for Mac with support for S3 in the same familiar Transmit interface.

Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer (S3Fox)

Operating system(s): Mac OS X, Windows, Linux — any platform that can run Firefox
Cost: Free(-ish; Don’t be a freeloadin’ jacka**. Make a donation)
Basics: A Firefox extension with an interface similar to FireFTP. It functions in much the same way.

Do you use S3? What tools have you used to store and retrieve data? Do you prefer another online storage service? Make your case in the comments.

Published 17 Sep 2007 • Permalink

Categories: Browsers, Firefox, Gadgets / Tech, Internet life, Server management

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Comments

Dick said on 17 Sep 2007 at 10:35 am

hiya just read your post and a fantastic idea
I my self lost 1.2TB a few months back
then I found

http://drive.123-reg.co.uk/ and its free *evil laugh*

j. brotherlove said on 17 Sep 2007 at 11:05 am

I’ve been doing the DVD-backup thing and you’re right; it sort of sucks. I know a couple of people who use S3 but I’ve been apprehensive about storing yet more my data on Amazon’s servers. I haven’t counted it out. But I’m more interested in self-hosted solutions right now.

tiffany said on 17 Sep 2007 at 12:02 pm

For me, self-hosted solutions have a basic problem: you never have enough space. Aside from the risks of something tragic happening to your media, it’s just a pain in the a** to have to keep buying DVDs, or hard drive space. That’s why I’d vote for an off-site, online, unlimited(-ish) storage solution such as S3 or Mozy.

I wouldn’t trust those sites with my most personal of personal data (i.e. electronic versions of my tax returns). But for other stuff that I’d likely publish on the web anyway? Absolutely.

John Smythe said on 17 Sep 2007 at 7:56 pm

Try backing up 3GB on-line. See ya in a couple of weeks…

Anyway, in case you have the patience, do take a look at http://www.mozy.com (IMHO better than S3)

tiffany said on 17 Sep 2007 at 8:07 pm

Oh, more like a couple *days* John — depending on your internet connection. I was able to back up a gigabyte or so in about 8 hours. And you don’t have to back up everything at once.

Mozy does offer an advantage, however, when you start storing larger amounts of data.

Anna said on 18 Sep 2007 at 1:21 pm

thanks tiffany. I just use an external hard drive. I used to back up to cds but who knows how long that media will last. then my hard drive died and I lost…EVERYTHING. anyway, this is great!

Ms. Jen said on 18 Sep 2007 at 7:30 pm

Hi Tiffany,

Thanks for the info on this. I signed up for Amazon S3 last year at this time, but did not have the time to create my own app to interact with it. Then I forgot about it, until your blog post. I have Transmit and am now using it to back up my hard drive.

Thanks!

smiles, jen ;o)

Michael Miles said on 22 Jan 2008 at 10:57 pm

Came across your post looking for directions on getting Transmit setup. FYI, I had uploaded files to S3 when it first came out in 2004 and just for the first time downloaded them. All my files were corrupted.