Online Backup

If you are tired of using CDs or floppies to store your files, than you will want to consider online backup. Your hard drive might be crammed full of unfiled documents, and you might be wondering what in the world you would do if your computer crashed. Don't leave your important information at the mercy of your fallible computer which might catch a virus, but if you get online backup, you can be confident that you will always have your files available. Online backup is easy t...

If you are tired of using CDs or floppies to store your files, than you will want to consider online backup. Your hard drive might be crammed full of unfiled documents, and you might be wondering what in the world you would do if your computer crashed. Don't leave your important information at the mercy of your fallible computer which might catch a virus, but if you get online backup, you can be confident that you will always have your files available. Online backup is easy to use and to understand. Once you see how well your online backup program will work, you will never rely on floppies again.

With online backup, you can choose between full backups and incremental backups, which will gradually store your files. These programs will allow you to pick and choose which files you want to backup and you can also save different versions of the same files. To conserve space on your online backup program, you can choose compression levels; the highest levels will save your files in their smallest form and will give your more space to store many more files.

An important feature in online backup is security. It doesn't make any sense to back up all your files only to discover that a hacker has gotten his mitts on you and your customer's personal information. A good online backup program will offer encryption, which will make it impossible for outsiders to read your documents. Even the file name can be disguised, and various versions of a document will also be encoded. This coding, however, does not make it more difficult for your to retrieve your documents from online backup; only interlopers are prevented from accessing your files.

With online backup programs, you can backup your files automatically or schedule backups. You might want to schedule these backups for times when you are not using the computer, since excessive activity usually slows down a computer. You will receive a detailed log of these jobs and an e-mail notification of a scheduled backup. This will enable you to organize your information and to confirm that a file backup has actually taken place.

For computer users who are concerned about how online backup
will affect their bandwith, space-saving technology is one way to preserve bandwith and to store documents more efficiently. In addition to compressing files, many online backup programs only transfer altered portions of a file to save space. You can select which files you want to backup quickly and easily using drag and drop features.

If you are looking for online backup for a large business, you can find programs using API technology. This technology is designed to handle larger amounts of information and have heightened security features which make the files absolutely impenetrable. Of course, more sophisticated online backup costs more money, but given the importance of preserving files and keeping them secure, it is worth the investment, especially for growing businesses.

The kind of online backup program you choose depends very much on the size of the files you want to backup and your priorities. Do research with different companies before making your final decision. It is definitely worth it to take advantage of trial offers and demos, and these opportunities will give you a better idea of which online backup programs are right for you.

How To Keep Everything Protected

Information technology is rapidly evolving as more and more companies use computers to store important data. Although computers are usually quite reliable, one can't be too careful about stuff that matters. One simple human error can cause the loss of all the important information. Theft or simple loss of equipment can cause a great deal of damage to a firm. To prevent this from happening, companies often use tape back-up to be sure that in case of an emergency they will have...

Information technology is rapidly evolving as more and more companies use computers to store important data. Although computers are usually quite reliable, one can't be too careful about stuff that matters. One simple human error can cause the loss of all the important information. Theft or simple loss of equipment can cause a great deal of damage to a firm. To prevent this from happening, companies often use tape back-up to be sure that in case of an emergency they will have a reliable backup from which to recover the data.

But is tape back-up indeed good enough for protecting your valuable data? Sure, it's a time tested method. Nowadays, however, specialists recommend more modern offsite backup services.

What are offsite backup services and how do they work? It's very simple: you just need an Internet connection – the greater the bandwidth the more data you can store – and your offsite backup service will encrypt your data and transmit it to a safe offline location to be stored. It will take some time at first because you'll have to backup all your info, but the next time a change is made in one of the files, the offsite backup service will only encrypt and send the part that has been changed and not the whole file. And that's a great advantage because it will require far less time and bandwidth. Also, all the backups are made at night, when computers are not used so this will not interfere in any way with your work. You won't even know it's there.

What's the difference between tape back-up and an offsite back-up service and why do specialists recommend the latter?

• First, tape back-up costs more and needs a person dedicated to it. But what happens when that person fails in his job or makes a mistake? Human error may occur any moment, and several companies are known to have had serious problems because of failures happening when they didn't have access to their information. An offsite backup will never require this because it is done automatically.

• Secondly, tape backups are stored in the same building or buildings as the computers. The offsite backup services store the data on several servers far from the place the firm is situated. In fact, that is why they are called 'offsite' in the first place! In case of a fire, storm, or any other natural disaster or human error, this becomes very important.

• Thirdly, offsite backup services provide more protection than any other backup method, using encryption, security keys, passwords and secure-sockets every time the data is transmitted. Often, all this is done at the military grade security level of 128-bit encryption keys.

Dial-up connections can be suitable for small firms or those that need no more than about 500 MB of data backed up. The greater the bandwidth, the larger the amount of data the offsite backup service can protect for you.

The fees for offsite backup are normally per month per computer, but often companies can get better deals on discounts, fixed fees, or customized plans from many offsite backup services.