After Megaupload, How To Backup Your Online Files

Users who have been using the file hosting service Megaupload to host their own files were in for quite a shock when they received notice that authorities had taken down all company server and files.

For some it meant to upload the files to another file hosting service, others who only had copies of the files on the hosting site realized that they did not have options to get their files back at all because of the take down.

Uploading files to just another hoster is however no guarantee that the files stay available for a longer time. It should be clear by now that you need to have backups available either locally or in another location to reduce the likelihood that you will lose access to the data completely.

A takedown is just one of the possibilities in this regard. A hoster may simply shut down business for example or change the business model, or data may be lost due to hacking.

Mirror Services

One option that you have is to use so called mirror services such as Mirror Creator to distribute the files to multiple online hosting services. If one or two go down, you still have access to the files on others that you have selected.

The process of uploading files to those hosters is almost identical to uploading it to one, with the difference that you cannot make use of existing accounts and their benefits.

Update: The most recent version of Mirrorcreator supports accounts as well so that this is taken care of now.

• Select files that you want to upload from your computer. A file limit is always displayed, in the case of MirrorCreator it is 500 Megabytes for free users.
• Select the file hosting services you want to distribute your files to. Free users can select up to ten services.
• Start to upload the files once, the mirror creation service will take care of the rest.

Here is a short list of file mirror creation services:

• Gazup! - Supports six services in total, maximum file size 400 Megabyte if only four are selected.
• Upload On All - Supports 12 services in total of which ten can be selected for distribution. Maximum file size is 300 Megabytes per upload.
• Digzip - Lets you pick eight mirrors from a list of 18. Maximum upload size is 200 Megabytes.
• Multi Upload - Upload to a total of nine different file hosting services
• Upload Mirrors - Select up to 14 mirror servers where you want your files to be hosted. No information about file size limitations posted on site.

You can search for file hosting mirrors and similar phrases to find more services that distribute files for you.

Nothing changes for free users who stay below the upload maximum. Users who need to upload larger files have a few options as well. They could split the files using software like 7-zip or Haozip for this.

Other services may be offered, for instance the option to delete uploads again, that are not available when mirror uploading services are used.

If you want to use a specific service, for instance because of the account benefits it provides, you should consider backing up your data at a second cloud hosting service to avoid total data loss if that particular services is no longer available.

A suggestion here would be to use a backup and synchronization provider like Dropbox, or if more storage space is required Skydrive from Microsoft. This means however that you will have to upload the files at least twice for this. You could alternatively back them on a local device if you do not want to waste the bandwidth.

Have another suggestion? Lets discuss it in the comments.