Using free web storage for data backup

Abstract

Backing up important data is crucial. A variety of causes can lead to data loss, such as disk failures, administration errors, virus infiltration, theft, and physical damage to equipment. Users and businesses have important information that is difficult to replace, such as financial records and contacts. Reliable backups are crucial because some data cannot be replaced, while recreating other data can be expensive in terms of time and money. We propose two methods which leverage various types of free Web storage to provide simple, reliable, and free backup solutions.The first method is based on the storage of data in the caches of Internet search engines. We have developed CrawlBackup, a tool which prepares and provides the data for Web crawlers and can then restore the data from the Internet even if all the data on the original computer is unavailable. The second method, called MailBackup, stores redundant copies of the important data in the mailboxes of Internet mail services. We have successfully used these backup systems since the middle of 2005. In this paper we discuss and compare these methods, their feasibility of deployment, their security, and their flexibility.