Hands on with HP's online backup application, Upline

HP has entered the online backup space with a new product called Upline. It's a decent cloud-based backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

The good news first: The software is simple to get started with (critical for a backup application) and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files (also critical--who wants to count bits when signing up for data insurance?). The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP-run servers in a quiet background process.

Upline's desktop widget.

There's a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you're serious about backup you'll want one of the paid versions. The least expensive $59/year Home plan gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs to share the online storage pool. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator's dashboard.

The product allows for Web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very nice if you want to grab a something when you're away from your PC. You can also share files via e-mail (recipients get links, not the files themselves) or publish files for public access.

Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. I don't know of any other products that handle both local and Web-based backup. It's a very cool feature.

The product is based on Titanize, which HP acquired when it bought the company Opelin last year. I've always thought Titanize was an underappreciated backup application. Perhaps HP was listening.

Now, the flip side. The biggest turn off is that Upline does not backup e-mail files. That's planned for the future, according to HP, but backup users will need it now. Imagine losing your e-mail archive. Enough said.

Another missing piece: System restore. Upline is a document and media backup product. It won't store your programs or system settings. So if your hard disk crashes, you can't use it to rebuild your system.

The application doesn't offer PC-to-PC sync (see FolderShare, BeInSync, SugarSync), which to many is an obscure feature, but I think it's one of the most valuable data safety and convenience applications you can have on a personal computer. There's no virtual drive, such as XDrive has, which makes using the service just a little more tedious than it needs to be. Also, it's PC only on the backup side, although any machine with a browser can view Upline archive pages. There's also no mobile client. Finally, the search feature seems to only search file names, not files' contents.

Upline is neither a perfect backup tool nor a complete integrated online storage suite. However, at this price point, given its unlimited backup space and its straightforward sharing options, it's a good deal.

The desktop application is pretty straightforward for a backup product.

See also: Mozy and Carbonite.

This review has been updated from the original: Information was added on backing up data to a local device.

[phpseo]

Too bad it's painfully slow. Don't plan on backing up large files unless you have a lot of time .
Thanks
Sachin

[phpseo]

Too bad it's painfully slow. Don't plan on backing up large files unless you have a lot of time .
Thanks
Sachin

[redfoxtx]

As it's from a trusted vendor and the price point seems quite good, it all sounds pretty good.

phpseo, could you elaborate on how much use you've had out of it to make such a comment?

[One-Eared Gundark]

Although the idea sounds great, I'll agree with phpseo: we need faster upload speeds to really take advantage of this.

While my download speeds with my broadband provider are quick, the upload is stuck at 384kb/s. If I achieve maximum upload speed (not bloody likely), it would take about six hours and 12 minutes to upload a 1GB backup file. My backup files are typically closer to 3GB.

This has nothing to do with the backup service, but everything to do with the throttled upload speeds from broadband providers. The longer that transfer takes, the more likely you are to get a transmission error.

[gary85739]

So, it takes longer than you want. What doesn't? Just run it all night,over the weekend,etc...

or...buy a big external HD, find a good program that backs up your stuff as needed, learn to use it...


btw, that big external HD will eventually crash, course this service might crash or ...just go away too...wonder which will happen first...you already know!

[meethil]

Adding new/external HDDs is all fine (refering to gary85739) when you are not concerned with off-shore backup, i.e. when you need to backup data at a different physical location to save it from natural disasters. I have huge amounts of data (1TB plus) that i would like to back up at a different physical location. But am concerned about the security of such data on a data storage server. Since i would be backing-up RAW/TIFF files (being a photographer) the concern that these files maybe downloaded at the other end and misused does worry me. And yes, FTP access (or a custom upload client that is able to provide good upload speeds) and upload speed are also of great importance. What does anyone have to say about the security of data on such storage servers? Thanks, meethil.

[RHPAMD]

This comment is excellent and echoes my concerns regarding backups- I have sufficient backup capability in the house (laptop, 2 desktops, external HDD) but this is of no use if there is a natural disaster or break in. Sending the files somewhere has its own risks. I would trust HP more than most BUT Bank of America lost files on several million customers.
I am arranging an agreement with a neighbor and good friend to mutually keep each others files with passwords, probable encryption, etc. Works for me.

[akucharski]

I tired to register since Sunday, - it was down for "temporary maintenance" - its Thursday now and the registration process is finally available.

Also got javascript pop up verification messages during registrations that didn't refer to the field in error. Seems very sloppy. I'm already skeptical, must be run by a third party that doesn't have its S*&^ together.

[XDMOlson]

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Matt K. Olson
Consultant @ ElephantDrive