Whenever I think of backup solutions, my mind always wonders back several years to when one of my best mates turned up at my front door clutching his desktop PC in a state of panic. He’d got married a few months earlier and all of his wedding and honeymoon photos were stored on his hard drive. His PC would no longer boot up, and the new missus was none too happy that he had not backed everything up to CD.
I tried the usual tricks to retrieve the data from the hard drive, however it was seized solid and the only solution was to send it to a lab to retrieve the data. All ended well, but only after a lab had spent hours meticulously taking apart the hard drive, and a whopping bill upwards of £600. This sum was well worth paying to retrieve all of those memories, but one that could easily have been avoided with the multitude of online backup solutions available today. However with such a choice, how do you know which solution is best for you and/or your business?
The main characteristics I always look for when choosing an online backup utility are:
1. File Retention
Many of the solutions available will keep deleted files for up to 30 days, however what if you had deleted a file by accident and didn’t notice for a couple of months? It would be gone if the solution you had chosen didn’t retain deleted files.
2. Continuous Backup
This maybe a little over the top, but I always look to cover the worst case scenario. The worst case when backing up data is that you have just completed a document which will hopefully win you a massive contract when your PC crashes and is unrecoverable. In this situation I’d want a backup solution that continuously backs up files as they are amended, not one that just runs once a day.
3. Incremental Backup
Backing up data over the internet can take a very long time depending on the amount of data you have. Therefore it makes sense to use a solution which does one initial full backup (which could take days or weeks) and then to only backup the data which has changed in the future (which should take only seconds or minutes). All of the unchanged data is still retained from the initial backup.
4. The ability to backup open files
If you are working on files when your backups run (most likely if you are using continuous backup, mentioned above) you don’t want the files you are working on to be missed. So it makes sense to be able to backup open files.
5. Security/Encryption
Sending all of your data over the internet is a big security risk. It could leave your sensitive data susceptible to theft by cyber criminals. Any online backup solution you use should therefore encrypt your data. I’d recommend that it should at least encrypt the data on your PC before uploading to the internet, and that the upload should be over an SSL connection and that the data should be encrypted when stored by the backup provider.
So Which Solution is Right for You?
I’m afraid there is no one solution which will satisfy everyone’s requirements, however if you are a home user, or a small company with only a couple of computers (but no server) my current favourite is IDrive. It satisfies all of the above criteria, is relatively simple to set up, and costs as little as £3.05 per month for a 150Gb account (going by today’s exchange rate as pricing is in dollars on the IDrive website). You can sign up for a free 2GB IDrive account to try it out yourself by clicking here. There are other very popular, and similarly priced solutions such as Mozy, and Carbonite, however they don’t satisfy all of the criteria listed above.
For larger businesses that use databases, or exchange servers, I’d recommend talking to your IT advisors about the most appropriate solutions. There are many solutions available to you however it is best to have expert advice to tailor a specific solution to your needs. If you don’t have an existing IT advisor, please contact us and we’ll be happy to recommend a solution to match your requirements (See our web page on Security and Backups).