Best mixed environment (OS X + Windows) backup? [closed]

Maybe I'm chasing a pipe dream here, but I'd really like to find an easy to use backup solution that supports both Windows and OS X, presumably something people never have to think about until the worst happens.

Suggestions?

Solution 1:

I have been using Mozy on both OSX (primarly) and Windows for over a year now with few problems, including during testing of recovery. The biggest problem, which I don't think is solved by any backup solution, is the slowing of the computer caused by encoding or determining which files need to be backed up. Also, Mozy is very cheap and they have both enterprise (reasonable pricing) and personal backup solutions (especially cheap) There are other similar services out there now.

Another service that seems quite similar is Blackblaze. Similar pricing and services to that of Mozy.

Solution 2:

CrashPlan is terrific. I use it to back up several Macs and a Windows box to local/network disks and remote servers over the Internet (mine, not theirs). It easily supports multiple destinations per machine, does incremental backups forever, deduplication, compression, etc. Also, it'll do near-as-continuous backups (every couple of minutes, if you want) and handles strange network configurations seamlessly, which makes it a great fit for laptops.

Before CrashPlan I used a combination of Retrospect and Bacula. I really wouldn't recommend either, for different reasons. Both haven't made the transition from tape to disk backups, so you end up storing big sequential files on disk like tape, and still have to manually manage your backup generations, redo full backups and so forth. Of the two, Bacula, while a pain to set up, is considerably more reliable.