Online Backup as Your Only Backup? Think Twice.

These days, online backup companies are popping up all over the place. They are an affordable and convenient backup solution. So why do I have reservations about using them as my only backup solution? Please allow me to explain.

The main reason comes down to speed. Most small companies in the U.S.A. (please excuse my US-centric point of view) have DSL or Cable Internet connections that rate at about 5 Mbps to download and 1.5 Mbps to upload. That is not horrible nor is it exceptional. Most of the time I am downloading a file either at my own place of business or a client’s, the average DL speed is around 250 Kbps.

Now, let’s assume that an important file became corrupt and is no longer usable. Let’s also assume that your only backup medium is online backup. We now have to log in to the online service to find the file that requires being backed up and choose to download the correct file. Now, let’s assume that the file that we need to restore is 100 Kilobytes in size. At 25g Kbps, that will take 3 seconds. Three seconds isn’t a big deal in anyone’s book. Now let’s assume the file is 1 Megabyte. This file takes 31 seconds to download. Now let’s say that you’re missing an entire folder which is 100 Megabytes. Suddenly we’re looking at 52 minutes and 5 seconds to download.

If this is a business and they’re down for an hour, this is costing them far more money than your hourly rate. Now let’s take the scenario that I had happen to me a few weeks ago. I had to restore 8.2 Gigabytes from an online backup company. Fortunately these files were compressed. If I had to download the entire at 8.2 Gigabytes at 256 Kbps, it would have taken 71 Hours, 10 Minutes and 49 Seconds. That is simply unacceptable.

Now let’s assume that the compression was able to squeeze the files down 50%. That means that the file is now 4.1 Gigabytes and at 256 Kbps, it would have taken 35 Hours, 35 Minutes and 24 Seconds.

In all actuality, the entire restore took 7 Hours and 5 Minutes. The owner of the business was furious but we had no choice but to continue the download process. The entire restore took 7 Hours and 5 Minutes. Using the math that we have used so far, that means we were downloading the files at just over 1Mbps.

Can your internet connection sustain a 1 Mbps connection for 7 hours? Online backups are wonderful as redundancy and for the purposes of conforming to regulation but having onsite backup is still your fastest and best defense against data loss.

All calculations for this article were done by the Download Time Calculator.

 
Written by Tim Biden