In the context of this article I’m referring to local wireless and not the cloud, meaning backups are sent over your local network to another computer/backup device in your house.
Backing up your data wirelessly is obviously not a new thing. Automated nightly backups can be done in any number of ways be it a simple cron in Unix/Linux, Windows "Scheduled Task", OS X’s Time Machine or from any of the many backup software titles available. No matter which way you choose to go with, the OS/software doesn’t care where you backup to as long as it can get there.
Most of you out there who use wi-fi use Wireless-G. N is becoming increasingly available and more affordable, but G is still the de facto standard at present.
Many of you out there do backup data over-the-air via Wireless-G to the intended destination, however this may not be such a good idea.
The best possible speed over Wireless-G is…
…one MB per second.
You may get 1.5MB/s if you’re lucky, but chances are you’re only going to get 1MB/s and nothing more.
Concerning your nightly backups over wi-fi, this presents a problem. If what you’re backing up exceeds 24GB of data, the nightly backup won’t be finished before sunrise.
24GB of data is 24,576MB. At one MB per second, it takes almost 7 hours to transfer that over Wireless-G. This means if your automated nightly backup starts at midnight, it won’t be done until around 7am.
You may be thinking, "So? What’s the problem?" The problem is that your local wi-fi traffic will still be in heavy use after you get up in the morning (unless you’re a late sleeper), and as such your local wireless network traffic is slowed significantly until that backup finishes its transfer.
Nightly backups in the traditional sense are supposed to be 100% finished well before the sun rises. If not, it’s taking too long and can quickly become an annoyance.
"But I’m not backing up over 24GB of data!"
Don’t be so sure. If you have your automated backup set in such a way to backup your entire computer (which many people do), you are probably backing up at least 24 gigs of data if not much more.
What do you do if you’re sending over 24GB over-the-air for a nightly backup?
Consider switching your network means of sending the nightly backup data to wired LAN, USB, eSATA or FireWire instead. The transfer will complete much, much faster and your network will be ‘free’ well before the sun comes up.
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Another good idea: use a backup software that takes incremental backups rather than full backups. For your average user, that will make a dramatic difference on the time to complete.
That’s what I was going to say.
The first backup will take awhile, but later ones will be short and easily done while you sleep.
David/David,
Do you have any software recommendations?
Personally, I use a Synology NAS that includes a backup client.
At the office, we use BackupExec. But that’s really beyond a home user’s needs.
Probably not much help, but FYI.
Thanks, I’ve used BackupExec before, and yes, that’s far more than I’ll need (I currently backup to a RAID setup in my main rig). NAS looks like my next step for the home.
I’m on a Mac, so I just use Time Machine. And I also use Mozy as an online backup system. I’m all about redundancy.
rsync is good software for this.
It is a CLI, but there are some GUI out there if you are scare of CLI.
It will do incremental updates, and you can also configure it to remove files from your backup if you tell it to. If not, it will just add new files and transfer any changes in files.
This is good if you do some backup schema to have two-three backups always current (which is a good idea anyway).
Also lots of NAS has support for rsync in them (most run Linux anyway
).
Is backing up data over WiFi a good idea?
Yes, it is. ANY backup is better then none. And you could use a ethernet cabel for the first back up, and then do incremental back up over WiFi later.
I would also consider the fact that by backing up overnight you are providing a constant wireless data stream for anyone with a sniffer trying to hack your WEP/WPA key.
Didn’t do it before, but I think its kinda unsafe.