I just found out that yesterday, November 23rd, was Inernational Backup Day, a day to encourage and remind people that they should have a backup of their data. No, this day wasn’t started by hard drive manufacturers to sell more units, it’s good practice and common sense as all drives will fail. Let me type that out again so it’s clear — ALL DRIVES WILL FAIL. The ‘when’ is a huge variable; I’ve seen units 3 days old crap out whereas drives over 10 years old are still spinning.

Having a backup plan is essential not only for businesses whose day-to-day operation relies on computers (and these days, whose doesn’t?), but home users also risk losing their precious digital photos, emails and other documents. While damaged or deleted files can be recovered from working or non-functional drives, the cost for these ‘clean-room’ operations start at $400 to diagnose the drive and the final bill can be well over $2000. I bet $5 sounds a lot cheaper for peace of mind?

Over the years I’ve progressed from backing up to a floppy, to a Zip drive, to CD-ROMs, to DVD-ROMs, to external hard drives and recently to online backups. Actually, I run an online backup plus I have my automated nightly backup to an external drive for a two-pronged approach. What method is the best? My recommended methods are the ones you don’t have to think a about, which eliminates optical media (and besides, most of us have more than 4.7GB to archive). So why backup online if my nightly external hard drive backup is running? While an external drive is adequate as an option to counter primary drive failure, it is 100% useless in cases of fire, flood, theft or electrical surge. The online bacup runs seamlessly in the background on my computer, uploading new files whenever my network is idle — effectively keeping me backed up in real-time.

The next question you’ll probably ask is if the online system is so efficient, why bother with the external drive? For me, it’s an “all of my eggs in one basket” mentality. While I’m confident my data is secure and redundant on the backup server, I like the comfort of having my own local backup. Perhaps in coming years I’ll ditch the local completely. Heck, I already trust Google with my email!

Hopefully I’ve at least convinced you to consider an online backup service. There are many out there but not all are created equal. The service I use and have been suggesting for my clients is Backblaze. They offer a free 15 day trial and unlimited online storage for a mere $5/mo (or $50/yr if you pay up front). There are others which are free, but for free you may have a limited storage capacity (eg. Mozy gives you 2GB for free), but that’s hardly all-encompassing, as your backup should be.

If you have any questions or would like assistance in setting up a backup solution for your home or business, feel free to contact me any time.