Slow Internet? Back up to the cloud.

Dropbox is easier to set up than Amazon S3.

I’ve been working from the road quite a bit lately and my Internet speeds have varied from dial-up-was-better-than-this to oh-it’s-done-already? I’m currently somewhere in the middle and I needed to download a backup from a client site and it was timing out. So I wasn’t getting the backup done. I needed the backup. Hmm, but do I really need it on this computer? No. But I need to have access to it, I need it somewhere. It’s a backup file, it needs to be backed up.

Amazon S3, Dropbox or another Hosting Server

Store your files in the cloud.

I’m using BackupBuddy to make the backup and when it’s done I have a file that’s a few hundred megabytes. Hmm. We’re going to move away from this server so I don’t want to just leave it there. I can’t seem to download it on the Internet connection I’m currently on.

I’m slowly coming out of Old School land and accepting that files in the cloud are not only acceptable, but they’re better. I can access them from anywhere from any machine or device and they’re not taking up precious storage space (especially on my poor little Macbook Air with its expensive solid state drive!

In related news, BackupBuddy also has a feature that will migrate your site from the old site to the new site directly. No downloading and uploading, the files never touch your computer.

It’s not A to B. It’s not even A to B to C. It’s A to C.

So take yourself out of the equation and start using the cloud more. If you’re worried that Amazon’s servers are going to go up in smoke, sure, when you have faster Internet and some time, do a backup of the backups. You’ll sleep better at night.