Home Forums Creating your own OSBU

I looked at about ten online storage sites. Most of them would work rather well, but most cost money or require a credit card to set up a trial. iBackup was one of the few, if only, that was specifically HIPAA compliant, although others may have been and just didn't advertise it.

I did find one, Dropbox, which was rather cool if only because of its complete simplicity. It is located at www.getdropbox.com. The creators of the site number about ten, a few which dropped out of MIT to start the site. It is based on sync, and you can download the software to any computer. (you can access your data from any computer with or without the software). While many online storage sites allow you to download software and then have a direct web folder or mapped drive, when you download from this company, you only have a simple folder to show for it. Anything you upload will reside in each folder. One downside to it is that you can't edit a file directly online but first have to download it. However, you can open the file from your folder and edit it and these changes will sync immediately to online and any other folder on any other computer.

I was looking for this due to offsite backups. If you use the Amazing Backup and turn off the AC OSBU but set a path to your folder, then with one click your data will be uploaded to Dropbox. It is uploaded using 128 SSL and it is encrypted at 256 AES. This should be over and above the encryption it already has although someone can correct me on that.

You can download it for a trial and do not have to enter a credit card as it is free anyway. The free version is limited to 2GB.

Anyway, just thought it was cool. I am sure others have their favorite programs such as Mozy, etc. I specifically was looking for software that did not automatically do backups.

hey bert, bryan here again...

saw your post on offsite backups-do you know any that can handle ftps? i don't wanna install a separate program-just wanna upload using scripts. btw, i'm PM'ing u b/c i'm not sure how much jon would like us talking about undercutting his backup service.

I don't think it does. It's very simple at the moment. I did receive an email back from Dropbox stating it wasn't HIPAA compliant. But, to be HIPAA compliant, it is much more than just secure uploads and AES encryption. It's also all about the physical handling of the data.

When I went to "online storage" on Google, it brought up, as you can imagine, quite a few of these. It's funny, because years ago, I recall iDrive and xDrive, etc. xDrive since went out of business. About the 10th one down is a review which is helpful. I know that iBackup has ftp as do a few others.

I just thought it was pretty cool to do a one-click backup that went offsite for free. There are quite a few that will allow that, but it has to have a mapped drive or a Web Folder, etc.

I hear what you are saying about undercutting Jon's backups, but I think he has to be willing to compete. I mean when the most expensive one I found is $180 and most are much cheaper compared with $250 a year. The advantages to going on your own are numerous.

1. Month to month
2. Having an online site that does MANY more things as well
3. Having instance access to your backups. It's a little scary to pay $250 annually and not even be able to see your backups. Plus, if you need the backup, you have to call Amazing Charts.

A good example is Jon offers a billing service for 4% to 5% or whatever and yet we talk about Office Alley and other billing programs all the time.

But...you make a good point.

What file(s) from the AC folder should be backed up? Is it the whole folder (which is BIG) or just the "Backup" folder?

You can use the new amazing charts automator to backup your file and imported items to wherever you want (version 4.058). That will make a backup of all of your files including all of the items in the imported items folder. I have it backup to the desktop and then save from there.

Just to clarify, you can choose to allow it to back up or not back up imported files and images.

I don't think it backs up all files, only the ones it considers critical, which would obviously be the database files and possibly a few others.

What Bert says is true - I happen to use the imported files in AC so I have it backup everything. Just to compare - I looked this morning - my full backup was just under 4 gigs (still fits in one DVD. That apparently includes all database files, information to restore practice data (license, npi, clinic info) and the pt. files/imports.

If you set up your own offsite (I have a NAS that I can hookup across the street in a secure IT site) you can tell it to backup whatever you want. I found a shareware program called BACKUP SERVER 6.2 on the net - you can tell it to copy whatever you want to whatever drive you want and make it automatic. Lots of great options with the information Bert has sent above.