Feb 18

Malware, computer viruses, a fire at home, or a glass of water all of the capability of wiping out all your important personal data. Some of our most valued possessions exist in digital form on our hard drives, and most of us don’t do anything to keep them safe.

Imagine how you’d feel if your house caught fire and you lost every photo album that you own?Or maybe a robbery occurred at your home and they took all of your personal income tax information from the last twenty years from your office filing cabinet.

Guess what — unless you use a secure data back-up service, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to those exact things every day.

What is an online data backup service?

An online data backup service is a private, secure, and offsite location where you can store your important files and folders online.The service connects with your PC via the Internet and allows you to upload files and folders via their secure connection to a storage area on a computer that is only available to you and is protected by high tech PC security 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It’s the online equivalent of keeping your sensitive documents or invaluable family heirlooms in a safe guarded by police.

A couple of the more popular online data backup services are Mozy Backup and Carbonite.A Standard Mozy or Carbonite review will let you know that their services are well worth the money. Either will protect your data from dangerous software or hackers, as well as potential break downs or natural disasters.

Why bother using an Online backup Service

For starters you value your privacy.So that you can rest assured a professional service is watching over your data and important files.So you won’t be taking any chances that your personal information on your computer could be compromised.

Recovering data after a crash is very expensive, and usually isn’t successful.Of course the question has to be why would you wait until something is gone to try and restore it. Being responsible means being proactive about protecting yourself from catastrophic data loss, and the only way to do that is to ensure that your data is backed up and protected with an online data backup service.

written by Newshound \\ tags: , , , ,

Oct 21

If you were to look at past statistics regarding the information that has been lost in regards to laptop computers, you would find yourself amazed. Even though this information can be astounding, many of us still don’t take the time to back up the information on our laptops.

To put it in simple terms, nothing in the computer industry is fool proof. Hard drives can crash, the laptop can get stolen, or it can even be dropped and rendered useless. To ensure that we are never left without our precious data, we should always create a backup of our information.

There is no mistaken the fact that over a million laptops have been stolen over the years in the United States alone. Anytime a laptop is stolen, chances are that it won’t be recovered. If the information wasn’t backed up, then the owner will be left with no laptop - but more importantly - no backed up data either.

Just like you can with desktop computers, you can also create a backup of the data on your laptop as well. You can use online services, back it up remotely, or use several other methods to ensure that you keep all of your data. Preserving your data is something you should really look into, especially if you have business material on your laptop.

The best way to go about backing up your data and files is to burn them to a data CD. Data CDs can hold up to 700 MB (Mega Bytes) of data, which means a lot of files. To back things up this way, all you need is a CD/RW burner in your laptop, which most of the newer ones come with.

The only drawback to laptops is the fact that they don’t offer near as much storage or security measures as a desktop PC. Desktop computers have a lot more power, and they can also do things (including backups) in a fraction of the time.

The laptop computer was designed for on the go use, which is the main reason why people don’t really think about backing up their data. When the thought finally does come to mind, it is normally too late to do anything about it.

As mentioned above, the easiest and quickest way to backup your laptop data is to use an online backup service. Depending on your connection to the Internet, it can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours. Although it may take you a little bit of time, you’ll have the satisfaction in knowing that your data is there if something should happen.

Whether it’s for your business or personal use, you can’t go wrong backing up your data. You should always create a backup of your data at least once a month, even more than that if you have a lot of important information that you add to your laptop on a frequent basis.

written by Newshound \\ tags: , , , , , ,

Oct 17

Why change my existing backup solution?

Your current windows backup software may very well be running with problems and you may even have bought an external hard drive or even have a server running at home to keep your backup secure. Online backup solution are by many considered an expensive solution if you only need to take a small backup now and then, while others think online backup is too risky and therefore buy their own home backup solution with mirrored hard drives and what not. I would like to demystify all these statements.

Why use Online Backup?

Online backup is much more than just windows backup software, but provides you with a highly reliable backup solution, which can run in the background like we not it from antivirus software, that is guaranteed to keep your data stored on a reliable medium and additionally provides you with remote access to all your backup files like is was a online storage for files. If needed you can access all your files or create a new backup while sitting in the train on your way to work or bring your laptop with you on your vacation and immediately store your photos on a reliable backup until you get home. Imagine your laptop being stole or broke on your way home and all your family photos were lost. Internet backup services will solve all these issues for you. One last thing to mention is the storage capacity. While your normal windows backup software relies on your medium to have enough free space to store all your backups, online backup is unlimited. Some online backup services even provide free usage for private users as long as the data doesn’t exceed 2 GB. If you need more than 2 GB, you pay a monthly fee, which usually is around $5 and then you have unlimited space.

Online Backup Requirements

Requirements for running online backup are very few. You computer has to be running on Microsoft windows for using any windows backup software and you need to have an internet connection for using the internet backup services. Many of the online backup sites require you to do a test of your internet connection speed and if it is not sufficient, they will tell you not to use their services. In my experience, there is not such thing as a too slow internet connection. It all depends on what you want to back up. If you only have a couple of thousand word documents, you can do it with a very slow connection, though the initial backup will take quite some time. If you intend to back up your whole hard drive with all programs, images and word documents, you probably need a 512 kilobit connection or better.

Wrapping up

Using internet backup services provides you with better accessibility, unlimited space and very low costs compared to a power consuming backup server. This small article is the first in a series of articles about the subject and advantages, or disadvantages, by using an online backup solution.

written by Newshound \\ tags: , , , ,