I often see people on Twitter talking about how they cannot finish their upload to Backblaze, CrashPlan, Carbonite etc because the trial is not long enough. While I can understand the frustration these people are having often people want to trial a service as if they have already paid for it and upload all their data and do a complete restore of all their data in the trial period. While this approach is possible if you have a smaller backup set it is not realistic if you have 100’s if not TB’s of data to backup. If you are going to be trying a service out here some thoughts on how to get the most from your trial to determine if it is the right cloud backup service for you.
Be Realistic
Unless you have Google Fiber and an incredibly fast upload connection you will not be able to upload your entire hard drive on a regular cable connection or DSL line. You can use a speedtest tool, such as this one from Backblaze, to test your connection to estimate how much data you should be able to upload per day. This will give you a good estimate of how much and how fast and let you plan a backup test to suit your needs.
Create a Backup Set to Test With
Once you have a good idea of how fast you can upload create a backup set that contains a good proportion of your file types. If you are mainly going to be backing up photos test with a backup set that has a higher percentage of photos. A good rule of thumb I often tell people is to test with a backup size roughly five times the size of what you should be able to backup in a day. If you should be able to backup 5GB a day your test backup set should be 25GB. This way you can test how fast you actually can backup to the service you are testing. If after five days you only have half of it done there could be a speed problem with that service for you and you might want to try another.
Do a Restore Test
Once you have uploaded your test backup set do a test restore. You want to make sure your data was properly uploaded and that you can actually restore that data back to your computer. This should take less time than your upload since most ISP’s have faster download speeds than upload. Once the restore is complete check your files and see if they are complete, not corrupted or missing.
Longer is Better
The more you can test the better results you will get but if the service only offers a two week trial you can always consider a monthly sign up if it is available. This will give you a better test of the service and then you can subscribe for a longer term if you are satisfied.
One at a Time
Test only one service at a time. While you will never get perfect speed tests on a regular home internet connection if you are testing more than one service at a time your results are going to be way off. It is time consuming but you really need to test only one service at a time to get the best results you can.
Warning Flags
If the service has limits on the trial that could be a warning sign. You need at least 14 days to test a decent backup set and restore. If the services trial is restricted in speed, does not offer a decent amount of storage to test with or they throttle bandwidth that is a warning to stay away from the service.
Backblaze Specific Trial Tip
Backblaze makes it harder to do this because they upload everything on a computer and you cannot select specific folders to upload. To get around this you can set up a virtual machine that only has your test data to upload. It is not a perfect test because the virtual machine will not be an exact duplicate of your regular computer software and settings but it will allow you to test your speeds and restore. If you decide to keep Backblaze after the trial you have to remove your test machine from your account and add your regular computer. Just search the Backblaze help for how to transfer backup state for more info.
Here at Cloud Storage Buzz I have tested a lot of services. The majority of them have been tested in a virtual machine but all on my home DSL line that is rated at 800 Kbps upload. It can take days to upload a test backup set and do a test restore but if you are paying for a service you want to make sure it is the best service for you. I encourage you to do your own tests and pick the best service for you.
Leave a Reply