The absolute best way to backup your data on your harddive is an offsite backup service. I’ve tried a few including Carbonite and Mozy, and found Mozy to be easier to setup and get started with. I was also overall very happy with the Mozy experience - the service is reliable and their customer service is responsive and friendly. My only complaint is you have to pay for these services, but to protect important business information, it’s definitely worth it.
Here’s a quick summary of what it takes to get started with any good online backup service such as Carbonite or Mozy:
1. Quick download
2. Easy installation, you’ll basically just run a wizard
3. Guided backup procedure
You will be given a wizard showing you all the known places of important data storage and you will be able to go beyond this wizard and backup other areas of your harddrive.
4. Set a schedule
Your backups can be done daily, weekly monthly. It will be up to you how long between backup times.
5. Start Initial Backup
This is done through the internet, you can start your initial backup right after you setup the areas of your haddrive to backup.
6. High level of security:
128bit and over, your important data remains private in transmission, and residing on the offsite backup server. Only you will be able to recover the data with your password and encryption key.
7. Delta transfers:
After the initial backup transfer, every transfer after that will only transfer the changes made to your data. So your backups stay up to date, and transfer times are quick and painless.
8. Recover from anywhere:
So maybe you’re on vacation in Waikiki and you laptop harddrive is rendered DOA after a snorkelling mishap. No problem, once you purchase a new laptop, you go to your service provider’s website, download the client, log-in with your credentials, and issue a recover. Simple
In my personal experience, it’s worth the small monthly fee to use an offsite backup service and have the peace of mind that my data can be recovered, easily, anywhere and at any-time. I encourage you to start backing up today!
