Don't Lose your Data!

43% of people lose irreplaceable files every year.

The price of hard drives have hit rock bottom. The amount of storage you can get on one hard drive is unreal. 5 years ago people couldn’t have imagined the size of hard drives now, not to mention the amazing prices.  With that being said, lets take a look at a few options to help you back up your data.

The 3 main groups of data backup are;

• Online
• Redundant
• External drives

Taking a closer look at each, we will determine the differences and try to find the right fit for each situation.

Online

Online backup uses the Internet to move your data from your computer to an off-site location. Most companies will provide this service and include a small program to automatically backup your data. This is a nice option in case of your computer being lost, damaged or destroyed. Lets say your computer burns up in a house fire. Your data would have been moved to a separate location for you to retrieve later.

Carbonite – $54.95 a year

• Free Trial
• Unlimited backup space
• Small program on your computer for automatic backup
• Secure
• File recovery is only a few clicks.
• Mac and Windows

Carbonite is easy to setup. When installing. it has visual and voice instructions. Once installed you basically forget it. It will run when your computer is idle to keep from slowing your computer down. Carbonite is a great option if you want dead simple data backup.

Mozy

• 2 gb online backup free
• unlimited backup 4.95 a month
• Mac and Windows
• Secure
• Small program for automatic backup

Mozy doesn’t offer a free trial like Carbonite. Instead they offer 2gb of free backup. This is enough for most home users.

Dropbox

• 2gb free, 3gb with referral program more space can be purchased
• Sync files between multiple computers in real time
• web based access

Dropbox is a different kind of backup. Dropbox basically sets up a folder on your computer that syncs online. You can also sync the folders between multiple accounts. Easy to use, fast and secure drop box is one of my favorite tools.

Redundant backup

Just like it sounds, your data gets backed up in multiple places. This is the best way to make sure you don’t lose any data. The only problem is a fire could take out all your data because its all in one place.

Raid

Im not going to get into raid options or talk much about it. Raid is highly used for redundant backup. However, its not the easiest to setup keeping a firm footing in the geek realm. Read more about RAID HERE

DROBO starting at $499

• Total backup
• Redundant across multiple drives
• Easy to manage
• Software included
• Automatic
• Use your own drives

A DROBO is sorta like raid. It saves data across multiple hard drives. Unlike raid you don’t need to set anything up. You can use any hard drive size, make and model you want. If a drive goes bad, the light turns red. Pull out the old drive and replace with a new one, the DROBO will do the rest.

External Drives

• Cheap
• Fast
• Easy

External Hardrives have been around for many years. They are a great option and available all over. You can get HUGE externals for almost nothing. They typically don’t have a software option for automatic backup. However, I like toysync from Microsoft. It will automate the process.

Please post any questions in the comments section and ill do my best to answer them.