House to house remote backup across the internet. How can this be accomplished?

[Dave Klee]

Hey Arthur, one thing you can consider is using a mix of two tools: DNS service (like No-IP.com) and synchronization software (like ChronoSync).

You and your brother both probably have a fairly normal, high-speed internet connection, right? If so, that means you have an IP address that other people can see through the internet — but it can change whenever your IP service provider wants to. That makes it difficult for people to connect to your individual computer.

What a DNS service like No-IP does is give a computer a static “name” or “host” that doesn’t change. Then, you configure your router and computer to use the service, and basically No-IP keeps track of what IP address your computer has at the moment. When a request comes in for the preset “name,” No-IP routes it to whatever actual address your computer has at the moment.

If you want this to work both ways, both you and your brother would need to sign up for some kind of DNS service so that you have a fixed name that you can each connect to. There’s a bit of configuration, but most places have good tutorials on how to set it up with your router and give you a software package. And, I think most places have some level of service for free — if you’re not picky about what you want your host-name to be, No-IP lets you do the basic stuff for free.

Then, once your brother has his computer set up with a DNS host-name, you would configure a computer on his end to be an FTP server. Again, some setup here, but nothing ridiculous. What’s most important/challenging is the router or switch setup — make sure your home router forwards incoming requests for FTP service to the computer you want them to go to.

Finally, you use a backup program — my favorite network backup program for Mac is ChronoSync — to automatically connect to this FTP server at your brother’s house and copy files from your house on a pre-determined schedule. In reverse, you setup a computer at your house to be an FTP server and he connects to you.

Now, a word of warning, there are downsides to doing this yourself. ISPs don’t often like copying huge amounts of data on a regular basis (treating your computer like a “server”), so you might run into some resistance. Also, by opening up a computer at your house or your brother’s house to being a server you can connect to from anywhere on the internet, you’re opening yourself up to being hacked. You can do a lot to mitigate the risk, but nothing is perfect.

I’d recommend that, at the very least, you don’t use your regular production computer as the FTP server. Dig out some old box (doesn’t need to be fast) and attach some drives to it, or buy a new Mac Mini with external hard drives. OS X has FTP server capabilities built in, and the Mac kernel being slightly more secure makes it a decent home server choice for lots of people. Personally, I have an old Linux box.

But, if this data is really important to you and you don’t want the risk of setting up your own FTP server (or using an online backup service), a sneaker-net approach might be the easiest, cheapest, safest and lowest-stress option. Carry a drive to your brother’s house on a regular basis. Or, at the very least, buy a fire-safe and run regular backups to an external drive, DVD or Blu-Ray and stick them in the safe at your house. Very viable options with really low investments of time and money — the major downside being that they’re not automatic and you’ll forget over time.

If someone has a easier and/or more secure option, I’d love to hear about it — this is a problem that I know a lot of people have. Let me know if you have questions about any of this stuff here.

Dave

[Bob Herzan]

Hi Arthur,

Take a look at this company I think they have just what you need.

https://www6.crashplan.com/consumer/index.html

Bob Herzan
Vice President of Sales
Rorke Data Inc
952-829-0300

[Eric Hansen]

i believe you could setup a VPN tunnel to keep the data transfer itself secure, but Dave is correct about opening up a server on the internet – it does expose you to more risk. if you’re talking about backing up a lot of data, make sure you do a local copy first so then you only have to do incremental backups over the internet.

as an extension to the Sneaker-Net approach (btw, awesome name), i have started using a safe deposit box at the bank for hard drives and film negatives. stopping there once a week to deposit checks, it just takes an extra 2 minutes to swap a drive out of the box. surprisingly easy and cheap.

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Buechler Morgan]

I am using Magic Backup online service & really it’s great .Magic Backup is so easy to use, and so reliable. Unlike other backup products that perform “scheduled” backups during the middle of the night, Magic Backup is always on the lookout for new or changed files that need to be backed up. The minute you’re done editing a document, (well, 10 minutes after actually), Magic Backup will silently prepare and transfer a secure copy of that file to your private location on our servers. You never have to worry about complicated configuration settings, marking files for backup, changing backup tapes, burning backup CDs, or any of that old-school backup mumbo-jumbo.https://www.magicbackup.com/