upload time caculation

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I am considering using one of the online storage services to backup my files. My ISP is at&t Yahoo. The upload speed is up to 128Kbps offered by the Basic Package.

The total size of the files I need to backup frequently is about 1.8GB. The largest file among them is the 380MB outlook.pst.

How long does it take to upload the 380MB file theoretically?

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This is a very straightforward calculation!

Assuming 10 bits per byte of data transferred (including overheads), the maximum upload data rate would be 128000/10=12.8 kB/s, or 768 kB/min. or 46 MB/hr.

Thus the upload of a 380 MB file would take 380/46 hours, or about 8

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I once did some work with a company that did network backup on a commercial basis. They had a backup programme that backed up the changed bytes of data across a leased line – it worked very efficiently, but required a dedicated server on the customer site.

StuartR

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It seems that the online storage is not a proper way to do the daily back up for the large file. Even if I upgrade to the 768Kbps package, it still take hours in backing up the PST file.

Verizon

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And I’m sorry but I’ve been biting my tongue with curiosity. Why do you WANT to do this, rather than do your backups locally? For the life of me, I couldn’t see myself “trusting” some invisible internet entity with my data, whatever type the data might be. With the many available (and FAST!) programs we have to choose from and the fairly low price of external (USB) drives, using internet storage seems a mite risky at best.

(And I won’t even tread on the “usual” spiel from many of us here in The Lounge about which backup programs we use… )

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Hi Bigaldoc,

I understand your points.

I did have external 3.5″ USB hard drives as the backup for my notebook when I traveled oversea. Unfortunately, two hard drives have walked to the grave in a row in 12months. It throws me the question of how to backup my files when I am on the road safely. It was the reason I was thinking to use the online storage as the 2nd backup plan in case of disaster happens to my notebook and USB hard drive at the same time.

May be sending a CD copy of all the files back home every other day by snail mail is the only solution.

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I know this sounds silly, but the bandwidth of CDs sent in the post can be surprisingly high. The latency (time the first bit of data takes to arrive) is poor, but if you send a CD or DVD every day you can get a great throughput!

StuartR

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Probably about one and a half hours, assuming there are no unexpected delays.

128Kbytes per second of bandwidth will give you a maximum of 64KBytes of useful data (the other half being overhead, control packets, etc.)
380 MBytes / 64KBytes per second = 380,000,000/64,000 = 5937 seconds = 99 minutes

All very approximate, but should give you a rough idea.

StuartR

Edited by StuartR to add
Woops, I forgot that the line speed is given as Kbps (Kilobits per second) and the file size is KB (Kilobytes), so you need to multiply my 99 minutes by 8 to get 800 minutes, or about 13 hours

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