Why You Should Backup Your Data Online Rather Than An External Hard Drive
You might be tempted to buy a 1 terabyte or a 2 terabyte hard drive with prices well
below $100 for a new one off Amazon and use that as your primary backup. That's all fine and dandy for the hard core games your teenager's been downloading, your sweetie's chick flicks from Netflix and the classic rock lp collection that you've been transferring over to digital media, but think twice before using that as your primary backup for your hard drive. Below are a couple reasons why.The most important reason was a lesson I learned from my father, an insurance broker, a long time ago. Never keep your important papers (i.e., backup computer files) in your house. If your house burns down, where do you think your files are? If your house gets blown down by a tornado, where do you think your files went? You want an offsite backup for your files - FAR offsite.
If a chemical tank car blows up at the local railyard, you'll thank me, and Amazon or Mozy or whomever, that your files are safe and sound 3000 miles away in California. And in Argentina. And in England. Redundancy is the name of the game here. All these online backup services use multiple data centers in different countries to protect themselves against regional calamities. As an aside, this is also a good idea for some of your important papers - or at least copies of them.
If your house burns down, you're gonna need that dvd showing the video you took of the house and it's contents to get your insurance company to pay up. Give a copy to your lawyer, stick one in your safe deposit box, and send one to your anal brother-in-law that lives 2500 miles away because he'll triple file it and never lose it. Same thing with insurance policies, birth certificates, all that stuff.
Secondly, what if it's your power supply that went bad and fried your hard drive? You're thinking, "Hey, no problem, I'll just hook up my handy dandy backup terabyte drive and reinstall my data." Well, guess again. Your power supply just fried your nice new 1 tb drive from Amazon - and no, you can't return it for a refund. Let Carbonite or Amazon Web Services worry about the logistics of your backup. It's nice having the convenience of an external backup hard drive at home or work, but don't put all your eggs in one basket. Get an online service.
The third reason isn't so much a backup as it is cloud computing. You back up your hard drive with Mozy or Amazon, then access it from where ever you are. if you fly off to California to land a big client, wouldn't it be nice to know that the presentation you worked 16 hours on is backed up on Carbonite? Always be thinking about Murphy's Law - it's gonna happen to you - your hard drive is going to die and it'll be 15 minutes before the appointment.
If you think you'll be accessing your files remotely on a regular basis try out Dropbox. The basic service is free and should give you a good idea if it's something you can use. You can always upgrade to the paid service. It can also function as an online backup for small amounts of data.
If you only have a small amount to backup, most online backup sites will give you up to 5 gb free. Mozy, for instance, will give you 2 gb free. If you need more storage, Carbonite will fully back up your home computer for $59.95 a year. Small business computers will run you $229 and up. The external drives are nice for storing your big multimedia files and handy to have for sharing files on your home network, but for backing up your essential files, don't go with them.
Go with an online backup site - and if you're really paranoid - go with two backup services - I do. If I never use the 2 backups, well, it's just one dinner out a year that I'll miss. But if it saves my butt just once....well, I'll let you figure out how much having 2 backups of your irreplaceable files can save in money, time and aggravation.
You can stop reading now. Google Mozy, or Amazon Web Services, or Carbonite and get cracking on your online backup pronto. Your mother will be so proud of you.
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