Top 4 Online Backups for Your Data
Approaching the end of another year, perhaps you’ve not had the time to think about the security of your data. Too often many of us simply rely on our physical hard drive space, unaware that if something happened one of two things would happen. First you’d either lose all of your data and have to start over, or secondly, you’d have to pay a hefty price to have the data scraped from the hard drive and placed on another hard drive or DVD. It’s a frustrating experience that I’ve been through a few times and I’m sure a lot of you out there can relate.
Since those times I’ve become a huge supporter of cloud storage, a place offsite that is safe from anything affecting my physical computer. Backing up my files is useful especially if you’ve got data that you cherish. It could be anything from important work documents to cherished family photos. Having a backup is vital is you want to ensure the longevity of your information and the team here at Crenk will share the top 4 online backups that you might want to consider as a new years resolution.
Carbonite Online Backup
Carbonite offers double encrypted backups.
Carbonite is the new kid on the block and has amazing support services to ensure your data is secure. Their services come in at about $55 a year and offers unlimited backup capacity. Security is top of the line from what I’ve experienced offering double encryption for your information. The install is smooth and most of the back up happens in the background while you’re working. It’s not a resource hog, which will please most power users who rely on things to happen in the background while they continue working. And if you’re worried about access to your files, you can access them remotely from any computer if you need them and the redundancy on their end reassures that your data is protected from down time as much as possible.
Mozy Remote Data Backup
Mozy offers remote online backup.
Mozy is a fairly recognizable online backup web app, they offer 2GB for free if you want to try them out. Mozy offers a home and professional version with varying prices. Home is approx. $60 a year, which is higher than Carbonite, but still offers unlimited storage. For the pro side the cost is estimated by monthly cost and then $.50 per GB a month. If you’re a large company you can see your bill rack up pretty quickly, but surely not anything different than what other companies might offer. In my experience Mozy was clunky, hard to install and then hard to use and was constantly giving me errors. In their defense though it was some time ago, so I’ve not used them recently and am sure they’ve streamlined their services. Their backups happen in the background so there’s no interference and they also offer SSL and Blowfish encryptions to ensure the safety of your data.
iDrive Online Data Storage
iDrive for Mac, Windows, and phones.
iDrive is the only online backup that I’ve not used personally. I have used their free 2GB of online backup to experience the interface and the services they provide. For me this probably ranks below Mozy only because their price plans seem a bit inflated for what you can get say with a company like Carbonite. The next level up from their free 2GB is the personal use which comes in at about $49 a year for 150 GB of storage. I find this hard to accept when other services offer me unlimited storage at a flat rate, even if I am paying an extra $10. The backup is built for both Mac and Windows machines, so there’s diversity in it, but the download is more substantial then some of its counterparts.
A favorite of mine though is their iDrive lite for phones. If you own a Blackberry, iPhone, or Android phone, their iDrive Lite is free and will back up your phone numbers, your contacts which is useful when your phone just dies. The restore can be activated from a new phone or another account so that you never lose who you’ve spent so long adding to your network.
Backupify Social Media Security
Protect your social media profiles.
Backupify offers a unique approach to your online data security. This service focuses only on your social media profiles to ensure that you don’t lose any of your profile or data information. It’s useful for lots of reason, hacking being the biggest of them. Sometimes services are just down and you need someone’s contact information, and that’s where Backupify excels. It’s a nifty little online backup if you want to try it out. Currently the service is free until Jan. 31 after which they will implement a pay model. Don’t think you have enough reasons for signing up, the image below should give you a few more.
Are these enough reasons to protect your social media data?
5 Comments
Blockbackup should be included here, they have have a solution for home users starting at 2.99 per month and a business solution starting at 10.99 per month, I have been using them for a few months and they seem very good. Have a look at them at http://www.blockbackup.com
MozyHome works pretty well for me – on both Mac and PC. MozyPro needs a lot work, however – the interface is extremely convoluted and not user friendly at all.
That would be enough to most people to backup their most important documents (not photos/music/videos) on a distant server with regular incremental backup schedules, instead of using an external hard drive and sometimes forget to do the backup.
Mozy’s 2nd level support is good if you ever need it.
Use the following link to get 512 Mb more space on a free MozyHome 2 Gb account
I like JungleDisk because I can use it as a cloud drive. It appears as a network drive on my computers. They cost 15 cents per GB + $2/mo.
The alternative would be to pay for backup service and then also pay for remote access service.
Some great choices you have highlighted. A couple other choices that have become popular are Backblaze and SpiderOak. Backblaze is popular and runs well on Macs, while SpiderOak is cross platform for Windows, Macs and Linux. Great for those that have more than one computer to backup.