Keep your Data Safe with Online Backups

We all might have an external hard drive buzzing around our computer somewhere saving critical information as a backup option. Have any of you left your drive when you needed it or dropped one and had it break? As hard drives get smaller and easier to carry, it can make it easier to lose them or drop them. Though external hard drives are great, they can become a nuisance as well.

The new wave of backups are coming from the world wide web. Many services now exist to help you backup your data with ease and the security of having an external hard drive. Online backup services allow users to install their software that will scan their computer hard drive for new files and it will automatically back them up. You get to choose which folders it scans through as well as which files it can pick. The service will overwrite the old file, so you will not have a large amount of wasted space on their servers. Most will then allow you to recover the files at your convenience if you lose them or are at another location if you need them.

The two most popular services out there are Mozy and Carbonite. Each run a subscription fee that average out to around $54 per year. This is a small chunk of change for the piece of mind that your data is safe and secure and you are able to access it anywhere you have the service’s software installed. One thing that we found out when trying both services is that Mozy has trouble with scanning files on any drive other than C. If you have important files on another drive, then you will most likely be out of luck. Now, they are aware of this issue, so they might have fixed it since we test drove the software. Carbonite gives you a choice to what drive you would like to backup, so it makes it easy for you.

As the software user, you have the option to allow the backup to scan your computer continuously to find new files and it will back them up after they have been saved. While this is convenient, it is also a large performance drainer. The software works in the background, but it takes a lot of memory usage to search through all the files on your drive, so it can become an issue. We suggest that you schedule a time to start your backups, like late at night when you are sleeping or least active on your computer. Mozy provides a way to start a backup once you are inactive on your computer for a set amount of time, such as an hour. After an hour of inactivity, it will start the backup.

So, as the need to better data backups become more and more important in personal lifestyles and business settings, online backups will continue to dominate the old external hard drive. If you have an external hard drive, you shouldn’t just get rid of it because it is nice to have a backup of your backup depending on how important your data is to you or your company. We tend to forget that technology can and will fail at some point, so creating a backup plan now will save you a lot of headache and time in the long run. Don’t wait for a failure to act, signing up with these companies is simple and easy.  We are sure to see more companies offering online backups as the industry gets larger and more people and businesses jump online to backup their data.

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