Webmaster forum - Can I backup my drive to my website space?

Author

Can I backup my drive to my website space?

Talal Itani

2007-10-27, 3:16 am

Hello,

My web host gives me 150 GB of space. I use only a small fraction of that
for my website. I thought, I can use the unused space to backup my hard
drive. Is this a good idea? Are they good tools for this task? Thanks.

T.I.

Viper

2007-10-27, 3:16 am

Talal Itani wrote:
> Hello,
>
> My web host gives me 150 GB of space. I use only a small fraction of
> that for my website. I thought, I can use the unused space to backup
> my hard drive. Is this a good idea? Are they good tools for this
> task? Thanks.
> T.I.

You will need to ask your web host. I will bet they wont like that and if
you came even close to hitting that 150GB they would delete your account.

Auggie

2007-10-27, 6:16 am

"Talal Itani" <titani@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:zqyUi.262$%r.162@trnddc01...
> Hello,
>
> My web host gives me 150 GB of space. I use only a small fraction of that
> for my website. I thought, I can use the unused space to backup my hard
> drive. Is this a good idea? Are they good tools for this task? Thanks.
>

First, you should maybe enquire with them if this is ok or not. They might
not care in the least what you do with the space or they might be strongly
against it.

Is it a good idea? Not really...

Problem is going to be, if you have 50GB worth of stuff on your hard drive
and have to upload it that could take awhile and its going to use up 50GB of
your home ISP provided bandwidth to put it up there and 50GB of your hosting
plan bandwidth to receive the files.

Then as you update and/or download you are again going to be using a fair
amount of bandwidth to get files up and down.

For uploading your hosting company can probably accept at full speed... but
your home ISP account probably has a limited upload speed. Thinking for
myself: I have a decent upload speed but it'd still take me about 180 hours
to upload 50GB worth of data (I keep throwing 50GB around because I presume
you have that much or more in files... else you would just slap it on a
couple of DVDs)

KarlCore

2007-10-27, 6:22 pm

On Oct 26, 11:40 pm, "Talal Itani" <tit...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> My web host gives me 150 GB of space. I use only a small fraction of that
> for my website. I thought, I can use the unused space to backup my hard
> drive. Is this a good idea? Are they good tools for this task? Thanks.
>
> T.I.

As others have said, you'll want to ask the host if this is OK or
not. I'm pretty sure it is standard practice among most hosts to
disallow this.

Also, keep in mind that you're taking a big security risk doing this.
First, standard FTP is actually a pretty insecure protocol. Second web
servers are, by their nature, exposed to the outside world. Your host
may or may not maintain a secure shop. Even if you password protect
that area, you may not be totally secure. Of course, it may not be a
big deal for some of your files, but the way I see it, if it is
important enough to back up, it is important enough to keep secure.

My advice: buy an external hard drive. They're cheap enough that
backing up to your host shouldn't even be a consideration.

Karl

Red E. Kilowatt

2007-10-27, 6:22 pm

KarlCore <karl@karlcore.com> wrote in message:
1193487586.484343.37490@o3g2000hsb.googlegroups.com,
> My advice: buy an external hard drive. They're cheap enough that
> backing up to your host shouldn't even be a consideration.
>
>
> Karl

Uploading large amounts of data takes forever. And as you say, external
hard drives are a bargain now. I've been buying Western Digital 500 GB
for only $125 each and I've got five of them so far. I have other brands
too, but I really like the Western Digitals because they turn off and on
with the computer, or can be switched off and on separately. AFAIK
Western Digital is the only one that does that.

--
Red