“Disaster recovery” is a term that pops up often in corporate IT meetings and server rooms, but we don’t hear it nearly enough in our day to day lives. If you’re like most people, carrying around family photos, music, work documents, emails, and everything else under the sun on your laptop, it’s very easy to forget that all of that data is resting on a very fragile little piece of equipment called a Hard Disk, subject to failure from data corruption, physical impact, theft, and a hundred other things.
What do many of us do to back-up our precious data from such a disaster- prone storage medium? We buy another hard drive (equally disaster- prone), copy our files over, tell ourselves we are going to do it once a week, and then forget about it until it’s too late. Online backup services are an affordable, hassle-free way to get peace of mind when it comes to important data. These services consist of software running on your computer, backing up files over the internet as they change, and even archiving several versions. Your backup data is accessible, secure, and most important, off-site. Your backup data will reside on a server farm somewhere in the cloud, with multiple levels of redundancy built-in, and is a few clicks away if the worst happens.
In our experience, the two biggest concerns people about online backup services are not really knowing where their data is stored (or who has access to it), and the relatively slow file transfer speeds. (The initial backup can take several days if you have a lot of data) The benefits, including cost, peace of mind, and functionality far outweigh these inconveniences.
Carbonite and Mozy are two very popular, very user-user friendly online backup services. They both include wizards that allow you to choose between backing everything up, or specifying which files and folders to include. Their control panels will tell you at a glance how large the backup is and how many files are pending backup. Carbonite even places a little indicator on the icons on your computer, showing you what is protected and what is not.
Sign up for a free trial of Mozy Online Backup @ www.charmcitynetworks.com/affiliates.
Charm City Networks has been a local IT Services provider since 2007, and provides a wide range of services from computer repairs and upgrades to advanced network design and consulting. Our repair shop is open for walk - in service at 1414 Key Highway, across from the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
