Online Backup Guide

To understand why you need to use online backup services, consider the reasons why you should backup your data in the first place. The answers are obvious to protect against hard disk failures, unintended deletions and other causes of data loss. Online backup services come in picture in the other causes.

Suppose, by some misfortune, the office is destroyed by fire, earthquake or floods. Misfortunes such as the Katrina are not common by they can happen at any place. What would be the result in traditional disk backup? Most people store their backup disk and drives in the same location as the original computer. The result is that the backup disks or hard drives would also be lost along with the original computer in face of the above mentioned catastrophes.

In online backup service, the user typically pays an annual charge for the right to store data online in a secure remote web server. The advantages are obvious. The data is safe in the event of a catastrophe. Even if you ignore the occurrence of a catastrophe, online backup is very useful when traveling. Consider the case that you are going to another city to make a presentation and your computer crashes. In such a case, you would hardly have the time to dash back to your home/office, get the backup and go back to make the presentation. On the other hand, if you had made an online backup of your presentation, then all you have to do is connect to the internet, go to your online backup service provider and download your presentation.

Another scenario in which online backup is useful is computer theft. A large number of computers are stolen every year in the U.S. from the homes of their owners. Chances are that the thief may also carry away your external hard disk drive or CDs in the hope of getting some useful information. The effect on you is that you are left without a computer and the data which you had worked so hard to create. Online backup is the solution to this problem.

Online backup systems also have some disadvantages. First of all, to use online backup, you need to have a high speed internet connection. Otherwise, how are you going to transfer the huge amount of data that typically resides on your computer? Next is the cost. If you compare the cost per GB of data, online data backup is the costliest. In addition to the fees payable to backup site, you incur the cost of internet usage payable to your Internet Service Provider.

Hence, you have to be selective about the data that you want to store online. A good thumb rule would be to store that data online till the time you have taken a backup of it in CD or DVD and moved it to a safe place other than where the original computer is. In this way, frequently accessed data is available online and other data is archived in the CDs or other media.