- How much does a subscription cost?
- What forms of payment are acceptable?
- Is there a Trial Version available?
- Can I mass upload the first full backup?
- How much space do I need?
- How safe is my data?
How much does a subscription cost?
A subscription to the SBCTEC Online Backup Software is a yearly contract that is billed monthly. The client access license is $5 (five) dollars per month, and the space is reserved at $1 (one) dollar per gigabyte (GB) per month. Space is assigned to each username in 10GB increments.
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What forms of payment are acceptable?
Payment for a subscription can be on a Visa or MasterCard, automatically billed at the beginning of each monthly cycle, or via PayPal. Business Checks are accepted if paying for the subscription in advance. Terms are discuss on a per client basis with SBCTEC.
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Is there a Trial Version available?
SBCTEC provides a trial version, allowing the user 1GB of space for thirty (30) days. After which, and any time during the trial, the client can purchase a subscription, and retain the backup files they?ve currently uploaded during the trial period.
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Can I mass upload the first full backup?
Sending files to the backup server over the internet can be slow. Especially if the client has a DSL connection or a cable connection that limits the upload speed. Most residential internet service providers limit the bandwidth when uploading while increasing download bandwidth. This is optimal for internal browsing, but sluggish when it comes to uploading files. In order to facilitate that first back, SBCTEC will mail you a 500GB external hard drive, with both FireWire (1394) and USB 2.0 connections. The drive will come with a return shipping label. When the drive is received, SBCTEC will upload the first backup to the server. From this point on, your workstation or server will only be backing up incremental or delta files, which even with a slower upload speed, will finish in a reasonable amount of time.
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How much space do I need?
The Online Backup Software not only backs up the files on your system, but will retain archived files for a period of time. It will also keep a series of incremental backups. In order to keep space at a minimum, the software will compress and encrypt the data as well. This is better illustrated in the following example. The client wants to backup 10GB of data on his system. The software has been programmed to retain deleted data and incremental data for up to 30 days. Based on an estimate, we determine that 20GB of space is need to hold full copies of 10GB with of files, and 10GB worth of data being saved. Due to compression, we estimate that we can decrease that number to 15GB. There is no formula set to properly estimate how much space is truly needed. The amount of space a user has consumed is reported daily, and adjustments can be made to their subscription on a monthly basis. Adjusting the amount of space allocated to a user will not constitute renewing the yearly subscription, but will bind the user to stated monthly charge for the remainder of his or her subscription.
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How safe is my data?
The data stored on the server is compressed and encrypted. It can only be restored by supplying the encryption key. This key is suggested to be the password you use to upload files to the server but can be set to something entirely different. This option is available when creating the Backup Sets. Each Backup Set can also have its own unique encryption key. If required the server allows restoration of any files to only occur in a specified range on IP addresses. This allows the user to only allow a file to be restore on one or more particular machines.
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