McAfee Online Backup - New Web Service

[mouser]

As reported at cnet:

The company [McAfee] announced Thursday the availability of its McAfee Online Backup, an online backup service that automatically uploads data from your computer's hard drive to a remote server via the Internet.

While online backup services are nothing new and have been available for a long time from many providers, such as Carbonite, Memeo, or Cuku, the main difference with the new McAfee Online Backup service is that it's one of a few that offer unlimited storage space.

For a fixed annual fee of $60, you can back up as much data as you want. This could possibly the best deal around for online backup, especially for anyone with a lot of important data and a high-speed Internet connection.

Other than the generous amount of storage, according to McAfee, its new service, which is powered by Mozy, is secure and comes with easy-to-use software.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10365852-2.html

Anyone tried this yet?

[Bamse]

Nope but Mozy should equal quallity. I liked their program last I tried, cant be more than 2 years old experience... Few weeks ago I was told Backblaze was the one to use for online backups https://www.backblaze.com/ Same price. Mozy strangely enough also charge those 5$ a month so why use Mcafee? May be differences when reading whole TOS, like yes you can upload all you like but download is limited. https://mozy.com/home Unlimited Backup not the same as unlimited restore/download - or people would use service for temporary storage  

[sri]

McAfee now offers unlimited online backup, but you should use Mozy instead

There are cases where re-branding something might make sense, but this isn't one of them.

McAfee has announced that they are adding an online backup service to their stable of products. There's no limit on your storage space and it runs $59.99US per year. That's not a bad deal at $5 a month -- right?

Well, no, it's not. But you could go and get the exact same service without the red McAfee M from Mozy - who are handling all the heavy lifting for McAfee Online Backup anyway.

Apart from the fact that you get service from the guys actually storing your data, Mozy also allows you to pay monthly, yearly, or biannually. Book a year and you get one month free. Step up to two years at a time, and you get three months of free service. McAfee doesn't offer any such discounts.

Even if you're a McAfee fan you should skip the middleman and use Mozy. Of course, it's highly likely that McAfee doesn't plan on standalone purchases of Online Backup from their web store. They'll no doubt get a pile of signups from users who receive their security apps preinstalled on retail laptops and desktops.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/10/03/mcafee-now-offers-unlimited-online-backup-but-you-should-use-mo/

[mouser]

thanks for posting that sri -- was just about to myself 

[biox]

Mozy $59.99, McAfee $66.03 but after having read a few horror stories about Mozy's file restore I went with McAfee. I know it's Mozy's server but in nowadays 'selective quality of service' there could be a difference. Once my 138GB are uploaded I'll report back. I only changed because of strange problems with A-drive (free) for the last 4 weeks.

[Carol Haynes]

What are your upload speeds?

I tried an online backup system (expensively provided by my bank) but it was almost unusable because the maximum broadband upload speed for most UK ISPs is 448kbs and in reality it is more like 375kbs. Trouble is it means it takes forever to upload any reasonable size backup.

Unless you have fast upload speeds unlimited backup is pretty meaningless - unless you are prepared to take weeks creating the intial backup.

The other issues I wonder about are:

• how secure is the data you upload (in terms of reliability of the backup)
• how secure is the data you upload (in terms of others looking at your data - including the employees of the service)
• how quickly can I get important data back - odd files will probably be OK but if I need a system rebuild how quick is the server at streaming your data back to you? It's all very well having 20Gbs broadband or more but if the servers only send at a low rate is it worth the hassle.

Can someone explain the advantage over buying an external USB drive or two?

[Josh]

My big problem with online backup solutions is this. What happens if THEY lose your data or it gets corrupted on their systems? I have heard of one particular user, trying to locate the article, where a user went to restore his data only to find out that the company providing the backup services had lost his data. They then proceeded to tell him that they are not responsible and that it is ultimately the end users responsibility to back up said data.

Thoughts?

[Innuendo]

Can someone explain the advantage over buying an external USB drive or two?

I think the advantage is supposed to be if your computer and peripherals are burned in a fire or if someone came in and stole it all your data would be safely stored on a server many miles away.

Of course, you could take that "external USB drive or two" and store them at a friend's or relative's house & have that same advantage.

[Lashiec]

My big problem with online backup solutions is this. What happens if THEY lose your data or it gets corrupted on their systems?

If it's a serious company, it's a given that they should have a backup system in place in case these kind of things happen. Since you can't really tell, as everyone says they backup their users data, and when shit happens, it turns out they don't, you're pretty much f***** up.

The thing is, with the paltry upload speeds most people has, and the small storage space most services offer, online backup services are supposed to be used as secondary (or even tertiary) backup systems, never as the primary one, and only for really critical files that should be backed up in more than one place. As it is, I don't expect Mozy of McAfee or whatever to hold my entire musical collection or my ISP to be able to handle such enormous transfer with a reasonable upload time. I do expect them to be able to store copies of certain documents or key files, though.

[mouser]

What Innuendo said.  The idea is to have 2 copies, then it doesn't matter of the online company has a fire or your house has a fire, as long as both dont have fires at the same time.

[Carol Haynes]

If it's a serious company, it's a given that they should have a backup system in place in case these kind of things happen. Since you can't really tell, as everyone says they backup their users data, and when shit happens, it turns out they don't, you're pretty much f***** up.

Like the recent near miss with T-Mobile/Sidekick - which was of course powered by Microsoft!

[biox]

What are your upload speeds?

It's an enormous and relatively stable 548kbs. I'm about to change ISPs but BT wants to force me to go with them. So a few more phone calls will be in order.

McAfee seems to have a few problems with their uploader, at least on Win7. (temporary and manually) suspend function doesn't work, so either cancel or leave it running and be content with the low browsing speed. Temporary suspend via CPU usage doesn't do a thing either, I set it down to 10% but it just keeps running.

This is of course my secondary backup but I find myself rather often in the situation that I need some files and there's a computer but it isn't my one, So the idea was to have access to that stuff from almost everywhere. That might have to do with my being very well disorganised but that's not going to change.