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Posts Tagged ‘online backup’

What Do the Best Online Backup Services Have to Offer?

December 5th, 2009

Whether you are a student with school work to store or just someone looking for a place to keep your huge photo collection, the best online backup services have a lot to offer you. If you  just want to make space on your hard drive for something else or if you are worried about possible damage to your files, you will find that the best place to  keep them is far, far away. Since most file backup companies have bunkers which are nearly impervious to outside disasters, there really is no safer place  that you can put your important files. But finding the company that works best for you can be a bit of a challenge unless you know what to look for.

Online storage companies which offer similar services are priced competitively – usually around per month. However, depending on the exact services that you want, you may pay less or more, sometimes even nothing at all. Just be extra careful in accepting services with suspiciously low or free offers. While most of them are usually harmless, entrusting your important data with someone who does not necessarily offer the service that you need may not be a good idea. Additionally, it is just about fair that you get what you pay for, for your online backup services.

Access to the files you backup may or may not be tremendously important to you. If you are just looking to store your photos, you may not need them at a  moment’s notice. But if you are a student who wants access to you old homework files or a business person who needs to get to old client data, you  want a service that does not require you to wait all day to see your files. Different companies offer different levels of access to the files you store so  getting the one that suits your needs is very important.

Of course, you also want to make sure that using the software offered to you by the company is easy to use. Different companies have different systems and because of this, you often have to deal with different levels of user-friendliness.  Programs which are technical to use may be difficult to work with. The good thing about backing up your files online is that you are given the protection you need without having to waste your time. And so, it is  necessary that the company you pick can offer you a decent backup wizard in their software suite.

Lastly, you need a secure service. Most companies offer encryption of your stored information as it travels between your computer and theirs. However, some companies can offer more than that. You can find companies which scatter your files across their services making it impossible for any outsider to decipher any important information. You may also choose to put a password on your files. All these added services work together to give you the top-level security that you need. But to make sure that a service is right for your needs, just read a few reviews, like the Carbonite review.

Need to Restore Files from Carbonite Backup? It’s Easy!

November 2nd, 2009

If you’re still researching whether or not the Carbonite online backup utility is right for you, you should know that the process to restore files from Carbonite is fairly easy even for the non-technical users. Carbonite has made their place in the online backup services market by offering one of the most affordable services available and making it so streamlined that you don’t have to be a computer whiz to understand it. The process for restoring your files is made even easier by a software wizard comes with the Carbonite package.

If you are ever faced with the task of restoring your files after reformatting your hard drive or after a computer crash, the first thing you would need to do is download the Carbonite software again. As soon as you do this, the setup wizard will ask you to choose from two options – restore your files later or restore your files now. If you opt to restore them immediately, you will then be asked if you prefer the files downloaded to their original locations, or choose specific files for specific users. Most users would choose option one but even the more advanced option is not that difficult to follow.

In restoring files from Carbonite, you also have the choice to restore a single file or an older file version. To do this, first you would need to go to My Computer, where Carbonite is listed as a virtual drive. Open the drive and go through it just as you would any other computer drive. You should be able to find all your files there. Once you locate the particular file you want to restore, highlight it, and click Restore to download it back to its original location. You may also click Restore To to send the file to another location. If you want to restore an older version of a particular file (up to three months back), click on Restore Previous Version.

However, you are also bound to discover some drawbacks to Carbonite as well. You will not be able to restore files from Carbonite very quickly if they are huge. A file that is a few hundred megs could take hours or even days depending upon the speed of the servers. Carbonite servers can be fairly slow, but that is how they are able to offer such an affordable price. In the event of a system crash, where you lose all of your data, you may not care if it is slow so long as you get all of your files back. However, if you need to restore an important document very quickly, you may be left waiting for a bit.

Carbonite online backup is not perfect. Nevertheless, it offers us good value for money considering we get a service that allows us to recover our lost data. Other companies can charge us 10 times higher than what Carbonite asks for and are a lot less user-friendly. While some of us may never have to restore files from Carbonite, the monthly subscription fee is still cheap insurance for the safety and security of our files and our own peace of mind.

Obvious Online Backup Strategy

January 17th, 2009

We know your wondering why would you use the Internet as a backup method. Well, there’s a whole bunch of reasons. First, if your backing up your files on the Internet you don’t need specialized hardware or software. A connection to the Internet is the only requirement.Second, you (and only you) can access your backups from anywhere you connect to the Internet.  And with proper encryption and security, nobody else will know it’s even out there.

the Internet has millions of gigabytes of storage space available to you and you can generally find a variety of quality services that specialize in Internet Backup.I pay right at $4.00 each month to store just under 30 gigabytes of files.Now I have used around 60% of my backup volume which leaves tons of space for future backups at a rate that’s more than affordable.

The first step is to decide which site to use.  Most sites that offer a free trial are more expensive on a monthly basis than those that don’t.  So it is a good idea to do your homework and join a site with the best features with no free trial.It will end up saving you a significant amount of money. With all the comparison sites, online reviews, blogs, etc. it’s easy to make a good decision.

So now, you’ve made your decision about which service you will use. Now you need to decide which files are crucial to you and that you need to backup. Providers that have software to make backups easy for you also tend to be the best Internet backup providers as well. and will copy the backup files AFTER securing them with good encryption. As you can see what I described so far the best backup sites are very easy to use.And the best providers will run identically on the common operating systems (Windows, Linux, and OSX).

The basic reason is that you’ll go somewhere else if they make it too hard for you to use. Just as in any business the market is a competitive one and services who don’t have a rich feature set or are only providing services for Windows or MAC, etc. generally arn’t reliable at all and may not even be around for you in the future. So it’s important to make sure they support MacIntosh and Linux in addition to Windows.They will if they’re a quality provider. 

So, let’s put this basic overview into perspective with some questions you need to answer when selecting a Internet backup provider.

Do they make it simple for you by providing some free software?

Does their software support MAC, Linux and Windows?

Can you back up all your computers with just one account?

What type of online backup is it? How often do the backups occur?

Is encryption provided by default? You must have encryption (preferably 256bit AES) for maximum security.

You have other issues that are important to you.But these questions will help you narrow down your selection to only the best providers in short order.

Files, Photos & Data Backed up Right

November 15th, 2008

We all know we have to backup our computers, but those backups files can get huge. Add that to your existing files and your computers disk will seem to have shrunk overnight. No matter what size hard drive you have, space is a premium. Besides, it’s not exactly a good idea to store your backups on the same disk since you can’t retrieve it when the disk fails.  So what are your options?

The quickest and easiest to understand option is to buy an external hard disk. You can often get a removable drive that is large enough to do the job.  But if you travel you have to take your backup with you.  And where is it when your notebook get’s stolen?You guessed it… In the case with your stolen laptop.  And, they are still hard disks and at some point they will fail. You may find the backup fails before your notebook does.

Internet Attached Storage  is actually a good idea because dedicated hardware is in the same place as your computer.  Have a fire?  flood?  theft?At the worst time, it’s destroyed. And when that happens, a Cloud Backup online will always have a copy in a place for you. This is why businesses usually have one backup in the premises and one (or more) off premises. The best thing about Internet Attached Storage is that it’s available anywhere the Internet is. This gives you the convenience of having a backup available both locally (via Cloud Backup’s “mounted volume” option), and is stored remotely.  So when bad things happen to your computers, you can still get your data. Cloud Backup is automatic, inexpensive, secure, and lets you recover your files, photos, and data easily.

Network attached storage can make sense if you have several computers. They allow you to not only backup several computers’ data into one location but also ability to share or retrieve files from that central area. But adding dedicated hardware can box you in a corner, financially and technically.And if fire, flood or theft happens… It’s all for naught.Besides, CloudBackup lets you backup a whole office full of computers, or just your home PC with one account.

DVD and CD media can be an inexpensive but higher risk solution.But backing up to disks every day is a easily forgotton and thankless chore. It becomes even more hard work when you have a lot of files and your backup spans several disks. The other problem with this method is, backup utilities that come with your computer usually cannot backup to a CD or DVD drive. So you’ll have to fork out extra money to buy a third party backup software that will. And then you have to worry about where to keep piles of these CD/DVD’s where they won’t be scratched, exposed to high temperatures, or suffer the risk of fire, flood, and theft. 

No backup solution is one hundred percent and what you choose of course will depend on how you work. If your data is really important to you, use Internet Attached Storage like OPENRSM CloudBackup.  That way your data is always available, secure, and you don’t have to worry.  CloudBackup has you covered.

Peace of Mind for your PC - How to backup your computer

November 11th, 2008

The majority of us know that we should be backing up our data. If you’ve never experienced a hard drive failure or complete PC crash then consider yourself lucky, and recognize that there’s never been a better moment then this one right here to get started backing up your important files, folders and multimedia data.

Before you rush out to buy a piece of software to backup your files there are a few things you need to educate yourself on.Having an idea of the files you want to backup, keeping the process easy, and doing some research on the popular products before you buy are the main items you should keep in mind.

Know what you want backed up

Before you rush out to buy an expensive piece of software to backup your system you need to know what it is you want backed up.Some of the backup programs are designed to create complete system backups, how ever this is often more then the average computer user needs.

Most of us that are just average home computer users should backup our videos, photos, and personal documents but shouldn’t worry to much about the rest.This can make things a little to high tech for someone who’s just an average joe or jane PC user.

Go for Simple not Feature Rich

Just because a backup service or program offers more features then another doesn’t make it better.Trust me when I tell you to avoid buying a service or program that is very feature rich. Get the features you need but to many features slows down the backup process, this will in turn make it difficult for you to stick to a regular backup routine.

Instead opt for a simple program, more specifically one that backups up your files all on it’s own and only requires a one time setup.Two online backup services that meet these criteria are Carbonite Backup and Mozy Backup.

Do your Homework

Before you swipe the credit card or decide on how you’re going to backup your data take a bit of time look for online backup reviews. This just confirms that the software or service you’ve chosen is every bit as good as it claims to be.

Spending just a bit of time before you buy can save you hours of time and data if you ever have to restore files. Ensure that the program backs up files properly and also is easy to restore files.