Online backups?

• February 23, 2007
• James Skemp
• StrivingLife, software, Internet

I was reading an article the other day, which was discussing a companies backup plan. It's suicidal for companies, in this day and age, not to have some kind of backup plan in place (and, most importantly, tested). Yet, for home users, especially those with important documents on their computers, it's almost approaching suicidal.

There's ways to do these backups by burning to CD or DVD, of course, and even Windows seems to have something built in (or at least my HP computer with a DVD-burner does), but you actually have to run the utility, and put a disc in the drive.

At the end of said article, there was a postscript regarding a backup Web site that the original poster used. Another individual, in the comments, added another point.

Enter online sites like Data Deposit Box and Mozy.

Mozy (referral code W2RM57) offers 2 GB of free space (I started with 2.2 GB). The unlimited plan starts at $4.95. There's also a plan available for businesses as well (since they'd certainly use a deal of bandwidth and space. One thing to note is that when you upgrade to unlimited, any computer you use that uses Mozy must also be upgraded to unlimited (which means $4.95 per computer, per month).

Data Deposit Box offers 1 GB at $2 per month, and a free 15 day trial. I've read some very good things about them online, but I've decided to try the free route first.

Dan Conderman also suggested GMail Drive, which uses Gmail to backup files. With this method, you are using a third-party utility to access Gmail, which appears to be against the terms. But, if it works ... it's fundamentally no different than emailing yourself something (although it is automatic, and can be done much faster) ...

Of course, with online backups, you have to trust the site that you're uploading your content to. What are they really going to do with that data, and how secure is it? You probably wouldn't want to move secure documents (unless they were encrypted personally) that contain financial records, but how about photos, or work product that doesn't contain sensitive information?

What about you? What backup procedures do you follow? What would need to happen for you to use backup software (online or off) on a regular basis?