laurentio
10th March 2009, 12:15 AM
Where's the best place to keep your backed-up data? Somewhere far, far away. These online services will keep your data safe no matter what sort of disaster strikes your local PCs.
Local backup to external or optical drives is an excellent practice, but it can't always protect your precious data. Just ask director Francis Ford Coppola. Last September, thieves stole not only his computers but also his backup device. The director lost 15 years of computer records, from writings to family photographs. Similarly, if there's a fire or flood or tsunami where you keep your computers and PCs, you too can say good-bye to all those digital photographs, your music collection, and anything else you've backed up locally—even if you're smart enough to use backup software (see our file-and-folder backup software roundup for advice on which app to choose) to back up to another on-site device, like a hard-drive or NAS box. You can, of course, store an external hard drive in a safe-deposit box, but that's a hassle, and chances are you won't update it monthly, let alone daily—and certainly not every time you update a file. If you want near-real time off-site backup, an online backup service is the way to go.
The services are inexpensive (from £5 a month), and the best ones won't noticeably slow down your PC use or Web browsing (after the initial large upload, at least). They also encrypt your data before, during, and after it's been sent to industrial-strength servers. There's no media to mess with, either. The service can start processing and uploading files automatically on a schedule or in the background when there are enough free cycles available.
But though all these services give you the safety of keeping your data in a secure, remote location, there are real differences among them. The biggest differentiators are ease of use in setup, choosing files and folders for backup, and, especially, getting files back if you lose them. The best, such as BOB and SOS Online Backup, offer wizards to streamline the processes. Beware: Some, such as IDrive, are still plagued with confusing interfaces, and some use confusing programmer-centric lingo (I found MozyHome's talk of "reticulated splines" particularly baffling).
There are also differences in security. BOB, for example, encrypts your data locally, using SSL2 to encrypt during transfer, and then encrypts it again on the server—it can even scatter your data among several servers. Some, such as IDrive, Carbonite and BOB, go so far as to give you the option of being the only keeper of the decryption key. But be careful if you choose that option—should you forget your password, no force on earth can restore your data.
Read more about our choice, IDrive here:
http://support.bicestercomputers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=290
Local backup to external or optical drives is an excellent practice, but it can't always protect your precious data. Just ask director Francis Ford Coppola. Last September, thieves stole not only his computers but also his backup device. The director lost 15 years of computer records, from writings to family photographs. Similarly, if there's a fire or flood or tsunami where you keep your computers and PCs, you too can say good-bye to all those digital photographs, your music collection, and anything else you've backed up locally—even if you're smart enough to use backup software (see our file-and-folder backup software roundup for advice on which app to choose) to back up to another on-site device, like a hard-drive or NAS box. You can, of course, store an external hard drive in a safe-deposit box, but that's a hassle, and chances are you won't update it monthly, let alone daily—and certainly not every time you update a file. If you want near-real time off-site backup, an online backup service is the way to go.
The services are inexpensive (from £5 a month), and the best ones won't noticeably slow down your PC use or Web browsing (after the initial large upload, at least). They also encrypt your data before, during, and after it's been sent to industrial-strength servers. There's no media to mess with, either. The service can start processing and uploading files automatically on a schedule or in the background when there are enough free cycles available.
But though all these services give you the safety of keeping your data in a secure, remote location, there are real differences among them. The biggest differentiators are ease of use in setup, choosing files and folders for backup, and, especially, getting files back if you lose them. The best, such as BOB and SOS Online Backup, offer wizards to streamline the processes. Beware: Some, such as IDrive, are still plagued with confusing interfaces, and some use confusing programmer-centric lingo (I found MozyHome's talk of "reticulated splines" particularly baffling).
There are also differences in security. BOB, for example, encrypts your data locally, using SSL2 to encrypt during transfer, and then encrypts it again on the server—it can even scatter your data among several servers. Some, such as IDrive, Carbonite and BOB, go so far as to give you the option of being the only keeper of the decryption key. But be careful if you choose that option—should you forget your password, no force on earth can restore your data.
Read more about our choice, IDrive here:
http://support.bicestercomputers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=290