Need to backup outlook.com to cloud storage, without desktop software - Testing UpSafe. Are there any similar services?

[Thomas Inman]

I need to find a reliable solution for backing up outlook.com accounts to cloud storage without using desktop software to backup to local storage or NAS. Cloud-to-cloud. Some method or technique that is reliable at maintaining a daily backup or second copy.

I am aware of and have been testing UpSafe, which gave me 15GB of free storage for mail, onedrive, calendar, and contacts. 15GB is not enough to backup my primary OneDrive, but for mail/cal/contacts, it does work. I have found that if you tell it to do something, a job will get stuck in the task manager indefinitely. I have had to cancel jobs and restart them, which isn't reassuring as far as reliability is concerned. So far, Upsafe is the best solution I've found, aside from not having enough storage for my onedrive (a wish list item, not a requirement). Have you used another service similar to UpSafe that you can share here?

Two other things I have tried: adding my primary outlook.com account to another outlook.com account I created, so they sync, which works fine except for one deal killing problem - delete an email in the second account also deletes it in the primary account (a sync, not a backup). The second thing I tried is setting my primary account to 'forward email' to the second, newly created account. This works for emails only, and does not backup contacts/calendar/onedrive.

For clarity: I have a custom domain, and my accounts are grandfathered outlook.com (free), which means they are not regular Office 365 accounts (paid). UpSafe works with my accounts, which makes it stand out from all of the other backup services I've been able to find that only work with O365 accounts. I have no plans to 'upgrade' my domain to O365.

I should also mention that I do have a Synology NAS, which I store image backups on, but not outlook.com data. I have looked at a couple NAS applications that can be installed to backup O365 accounts, but not outlook.com accounts. I'm not opposed to having a NAS application back up outlook.com accounts, but my preference is a completely offsite backup solution like UpSafe.

 

[dbjdbj]

1. outlook.com (aka live.com) and office.com -- it is best to think of them as two different companies. which do not like each other.
2. your "accidental" architecture (aka solution) is sound: download things to local then upload them to yet another cloud storage.

with all the respect I have no time to compare cloud storage solutions, so here is the advice:

1. for 50GB free cloud storage I use mega.nz -- to reach the 50 mark since recently one has to jump through some benign hoops
2. for a "final" solution I can recommend Get 1TB of secure cloud storage | Tresorit -- Business plan for 10 eur pcm. -- as far as I can deduce by reading what is written on site, an amazing deal

HTH

ps: I am not affiliated in any way with companies recommended

 

[Thomas Inman]

Your reply is appreciated and is factually correct, however the objective is to eliminate dependence on desktop applications to backup Outlook.com accounts. If a computer is not turned on, or is non-functional for some reason, such as a virus infection, hacker attack, ransomware, etc, a local backup may be inaccessible, corrupt, deleted, encrypted by or otherwise completely useless.

A backup scheme that includes three copies of data is a time tested approach, and is what I need in this situation. I already have two types of local backups that can run IF the workstation is functional and has not been compromised in any way. A cloud to cloud offsite backup reduces or eliminates this mission-critical problem. Hence the bold emphasis in my original post.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Outlook.com has an option to export to a pst (and export calendar & contacts to files) - but it cannot be automated. You could use flow to save new appointments and contacts in another mailbox. Flow might be able to copy onedrive files to another data storage service - but flow is limited in how often and how many times it runs, so its not going to work well if you save everything to onedrive.

I use dropbox, onedrive personal, onedrive business (all of which have versioning - i might lose new data, but won't lose everything) and iDrive to backup folders for things I can't store in the synced folders (some templates that are frequently locked if used from onedrive, signatures, customized ribbons in office etc). I have needed to pull the custom toolbars out of iDrive but the only times I need to restore versions is when i do something stupid.

If the computer is non-functional, I have everything I need online - it's not an image, so restoring will not necessarily be easy, but decided long ago that i prefer a clean install to a fast restore from an image - there is a lot of crap on the computer I don't need. After years of making backup images but never needing them, i decided I could make better use of my time and storage space.

I have not been hit with ransomware attack (and hopefully, never will be) so I don't know how useful versioning will be and have heard stores, both good (lost just a day or two of data) and bad (versions were also encrypted). But with 10 GB in use on this computer, backup images going back far enough to give me a clean system are out of the question.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I am aware of and have been testing UpSafe, which gave me 15GB of free storage for mail, onedrive, calendar, and contacts. 15GB is not enough to backup my primary OneDrive, but for mail/cal/contacts, it does work.

According to their site personal account are $24 a year for unlimited storage? If i'm reading that correctly, its a bargain IMHO.

 

[Thomas Inman]

I have used image backups since the early 2000's, which has saved me untold headaches of re-configuring machines that had been damaged in some way. Application customizations that are far too numerous to document, much less recreate, can't be backed up any other way. Image backups can be a real pain though because they rely on a working machine to perform backup jobs.

I maintain a little less than 500 customer computers nationwide, and one consistent thing I have had to deal with is backup jobs that mysteriously stop working - the user being unaware of any problem until it's too late. I can't possibly manage every custom configuration of every computer. Roughly half of those customers use Outlook.com, and have not migrated to O365. The other half, Google. Nearly all customers have been grandfathered in with a custom domain (when Google Apps and Outlook.com using a custom domain was free, which has collectively saved several hundred thousand dollars over the years), so they have no ongoing cost. A few, I would say have 'upgraded' to O365 for one reason or another, but that is the exception, not the rule.

The emphasis here is about having an automated, fully off-site backup system in place for email/contacts/calendar specifically. Something the end user does not have to contend with on a periodic basis, but can be notified via email if a backup did not complete for any reason.

Using my own situation as a template, I have most of my files synced to a 1TB OneDrive, which works pretty well, but doesn't address backing up email/contacts/calendar data.

I can give another example of why local email backups don't work as well as offsite. I have a customer that is in business and has two homes with computers in both locations. When one machine sits for a month without being used (ie. Outlook not open), a local backup of the OST file is outdated. A local backup of the OST file on the other machine may be useless as well if damaged for any reason. Because of the type of business he runs, he has had devastating situations occur such as accidental deletion, ransomware attack, and hacker attack on his email accounts, where data could not be recovered. Restoring a system from an image backup may rescue him from a ransomware attack, but does nothing to protect his email. I have sited UpSafe in my original post, which makes it very easy to restore email directly to the server regardless of the condition of the workstation being used at the time. The purpose, aside from being super easy and quick to restore email data, is to decouple the backup process from the local machine so that they are completely independent.

Back in the day, email replication/retention services for Exchange were more common for small businesses that had their own in-house server, especially those are legally required to maintain records for x number of years. Those services, when I dealt with them back then, were extremely expensive. One company had a major malfunction with their Exchange server, and the retention service charged them over $4000 to send a hard drive with all of their data on it. Having that offsite 'backup' was something that saved them from a complete loss of millions of dollars worth of proprietary intellectual property. Had they relied on a local backup, restoration would not have been possible.

I hope this clarifies that an off-site backup is needed for all of these smaller customers that run businesses with no IT department and need quick and painless ways to protect them against mission-critical failures.

 

[Thomas Inman]

Anyone else want to chime in?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

i'm looking into affordable backup services for a client and so far, none support personal accounts.

 

[swayforcep]

1. outlook.com (aka live.com) and office.com -- it is best to think of them as two different companies. which do not like each other.
2. your "accidental" architecture (aka solution) is sound: download things to local then upload them to yet another cloud storage.

with all the respect I have no time to compare cloud storage solutions, so here is the advice:

1. for 50GB free cloud storage I use mega.nz -- to reach the 50 mark since recently one has to jump through some benign hoops
2. for a "final" solution I can recommend Get 1TB of secure cloud storage | Tresorit -- Business plan for 10 eur pcm. -- as far as I can deduce by reading what is written on site, an amazing deal

HTH

ps: I am not affiliated in any way with companies recommended

I used Tresorit for exactly this purpose, it was great but file sizes were too limited to me. I switched to Nordlocker plan and I'm comfortable with this one. The great aspects about this software are that it provides unlimited encryption and multi-device access. Also, a trial version is available.