|
Your Computer May Be A Disaster Waiting To Happen
Is
your computer a disaster waiting to happen? We store
tons of important digital
files —
important documents, priceless family photos,
hundreds or thousands of music and
video downloads, business files, and other very
crucial financial
information — in our
computers and
yet a
lot of people (and even businesses) still
neglect to backup all these, whether to an
external hard drive within the vicinity or
online to another location.
|
 |
|
Do you
have a remote location backup in the
event that your home or business is hit
by theft, fire, water damage, or some unforseen
disaster? |
With home
and business
computers increasingly becoming a
central storage vault for everything digital, the
economic, financial, and emotional costs of losing
all of these important files are just too large
to quantify. Are you also aware that
no
amount of casualty insurance can recoup the loss
of data from damaged or stolen computers?
I've heard and read countless horror stories of
computers, laptops, and their onsite backups being
stolen, accidentally damaged from falling,
damaged by flooding, or simply crashing for some
unknown reason. The types of people who
experience such unfortunate incidents encompass
people from all walks of life:
business owners, students, teachers,
professional and casual writers, photographers, housewives,
music lovers, musicians, salesmen, researchers,
consultants, bloggers,
creative editors, dentists, magicians, soldiers, plumbers, professors, lab
technicians, scientists, etc. In short, no one
is spared from the possibility of ill-fated, frustrating
computer and laptop mishaps.
I did some research on
data losses from
computer mishaps and found the following
staggering statistics that seem to support Murphy's Law
("Anything that can go wrong will go wrong")
when it comes to computer's:
Based on the above stats, there is a high
probability that every person with a computer will
experience a major data loss sooner, rather
than later.
External Hard
Drives Are Not Enough
|
 |
The failure rates of drives that were in their first year of service or shorter was just as high as those after the seven year mark. |
Are
you still sitting on the fence deciding on
whether you should backup your data online?
Sure, you might have an external hard drive that
you use to backup your computer or laptop but this is
not an ideal option to backup your data because
it sits next to your computer. What
if both of them gets damaged by water from a
busted pipe or a leaking roof? What if someone breaks in your
house and steals both your computer and external hard
drive? Now what if your home burns down? Or if a
flash flood happens? These are scenarios, which
we hope won't happen to us but the reality is
that these kinds of disasters and other computer
mishaps happen to millions of people worldwide ...
everyday.
Now
if you really prefer an external hard
drive and you are in the market for one, feel free
to peruse through some of the best external
drives in the market today:
best selling hard drives.
Again, these may be the best external hard
drives, but not the best option for data
safekeeping.
How about data recovery services?
If your hard drive fails, there are data
recovery services that can help you recover your
data from your computer. Keep in mind though that
there is no guarantee that they will be able to
recover all or some of your data.
Even if you manage to recover your data, expect
to pay a hefty price for their service. Service
charges for data recovery services can range
from a few hundred dollars and into the
thousands.
A Victim Of Data Loss
Myself
I
have experienced computer hard drive failures a couple
of times
and although I managed to recover most files,
there are important data files that were
completely lost. It's not a fun situation to be
in but it happened. These incidents were before the
advent of external hard drives and when these
devices were still very expensive and not
affordable.
Even now that I have external hard drives to
backup my computers, the risk of having to lose my
important data files remain a possibility if
something were to happen to my home as a result of a
fire, flooding, or some unforeseen natural disaster.
I know for a fact that complacency may
lead to dire consequences. Hence, the smart option
for backing up your computer's contents is to use an
online backup service. Why take a chance when there
are now affordable options for online or remote
location safekeeping?
So How Do Online Backup
Services Work?
It
used to be that these online backup services
were not affordable to the average Joe like me
or to
small and medium-sized business owners. Thanks to high speed internet access and
the emergence of cloud
computing technology, online backup services are now
available to us to protect our all important
personal and business files. Besides, these services
are easy to use and very reasonably priced.
|
 |
|
Most
online backup services have backups of
backups for
an extra level of protection |
So
how do these services work?
» Online backup services work by installing a small program on your computer that sends files to a central server
located in a datacenter in some remote and
secure location.
» The software on your
computer detects files for backing up.
It then encrypts the data and sends this to the
central server where it is encrypted again to keep your data safe while
in storage.
» After the initial
backup, the software detects what has
changed in your computer since the last backup. If it
finds new files, it will queue this for
encryption and transmission.
» You can set your
computer to backup
online every night when you are done for the
day or whenever you deem convenient.
» Your data
remains safe and private, as these
services use strong encryption technology.
» In the event
that you need to restore your data to your
computer or
to a new computer, all you need is to do a couple of clicks
and the encrypted data will be sent and downloaded
to your computer. Data recovery is that simple.
» In addition to storing your data in a remote location, most online
services themselves have backups, which means
that you get an extra level of protection.
Now
that you know how online backup services work,
the next burning question in your mind may
then be: "Which online backup service is right for
me?"
My Quest For The Best Online
Backup Service
Being a victim of data loss myself due to
computer
hard drive and other computer mechanical and operating
system failures, I
set out to find an online backup service
that I can use.
|
|
Data security is a major concern for me, most especially since I will be storing
valuable personal data, business files, family photos, music, videos, and other digital media online. I wanted to make sure that the transfer and storage of all of these are as secure as possible. |
Although I may understand a
little something about technology, I do not
consider myself to be a techie at all so my
approach to evaluating these services were based
on things which I believe are practical and more
from a user's point of view. Some of
the criteria by which I evaluated these
online backup services were as follows:
» Market
leaders. I wanted to find out which online
backup service providers are market leaders and
are getting great feedback in the market.
Reputable technology companies
which are endorsed or have partnerships with
some of the largest names in technology usually will have
better staying power in the
market. These are the types of service companies
that I am looking for. For me to have the ultimate peace
of mind on the safety of my personal and
business digital files, I think
that
using the online backup services of reputable
market leaders is the best option.
» Data security.
Data security is a major concern for me, most
especially since I
will be storing valuable personal data, business files,
family photos, music, videos, and other digital
media online. I wanted to make sure that the
transfer and storage of all of these are as secure
as possible.
» Price of
service. Who doesn't want to get the best
price for a service? I care about this and am
assuming that you also do. If I can get the best
service at the best price, then no doubt I will
be getting a lot of value for what I pay for.
» Ease of use.
As I have said, I am no techie so any service or
software that makes my life easier and
simplifies the whole process of backing up data
without all the technology gibberish will
definitely score well with me. The more idiot
proof the service, the better it is for me.
Read related topic on:
www.smarteasysimple.com/Carbonite.htm
The Top Three Online
Backup Services
I don't know
about you but for me, if I were to use a service, I
would rather use products or services which have
proven themselves in the market. Most especially in an
industry that is fairly new, I would rather stick
with the market leaders since these players have
proven their technology. Since I will be
entrusting and storing valuable digital files to
a company, I would rather go with the best.
After doing my
research to find out what online backup services
are worth further investigating, I was able to
reduce my list to three online backup
services which had market leadership as well as
partnerships with some of the top technology
companies. These three services are Carbonite,
Mozy, and Norton (by Symantec).
Here's what I
found out about these three top market online
backup service providers:
 »
Carbonite is a venture-backed company based in
Boston, Massachusetts. The company had its
initial public offering (IPO) and was listed on
NASDAQ on August 10, 2011. Founded in 2005, the company has shot to
the top of the online backup industry due to its
outstanding service and technology. Since 2006,
the company
has backed up and protected nearly
300
billion files and restored more than 20 billion
lost files for customers in more than 100 countries.
The company backs up over
350 million files a day.
Upon
further research, I found that Carbonite has a partnership with Sun
Microsystems (which was acquired by Oracle
Corporation).
Carbonite was recognized as a 2009 Webware 100
award winner on Webware, a CNET site.
Carbonite's set-and-forget online backup service was honored as a favorite in the Infrastructure and Storage category.
In June 2010,
Carbonite CEO David Friend was awarded Ernst & Young's prestigious Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2010 Award
in New England, adding more to the credibility of the company's innovative and industry leading technology.
 »
Mozy,
which is based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, is owned by
VMWare. VMWare is owned by EMC Corporation, the world's biggest corporate data storage equipment maker.
Founded in 2005, Mozy has also shot to
the top of the online backup industry because of
its outstanding backup technology and ease of
use.
Mozy has
a global partnership with Lenovo to provide online backup service to its
computer owners. McAfee, the world's second largest
security software company, has also teamed up with Mozy to offer online backup services to its
customers. Mozy is also endorsed by eBay
and Iomega. General
Electric Company's (GE) has made a substantial investment in Mozy to back up data for
all its mobile employees. Mozy was voted
No. 1 for backup and recovery by Small Business
Computing in 2009.
 »
Norton Online Backup is a product of Symantec, the
world's largest
security software provider. Although Symantec is
more known for its security software, the
company has ventured into online backup services
since this is a strong complement to its core
business.
One of Norton's largest partnership
for online storage is with Hewlett-Packard (HP).
HP is shipping with its computer's preloaded Symantec
software which will include Norton Online Backup
with limited storage.
These three online backup
service providers are endorsed by some of the
world's largest technology companies,
which I thought was very reassuring.
Which Service Provides The Best
Data Security?
It has taken
years for online backup services to
earn the trust of businesses and consumers.
Over the years, encryption technology has vastly
improved. Venture capital and online backup
companies have invested millions of dollars in
R&D to ensure the development of data
encryption technology that can withstand even the smartest
of hackers.
For me, since I
will be backing up all the files on my
computer,
which includes personal as well as business
critical information, data security is at the top
of my list of concerns. This therefore brings me
to the next step of my decision-making process: "Which
online backup service provides the best
security?"
I did further
research on this and this is what I found out:
» Carbonite, Mozy,
and Norton all use 128-bit SSL encryption during
the backup and data transmission process. For those who are not
familiar with what 128-bit SSL encryption, this
is the same technology that banks and credit
card processors use to secure financial
information and transactions.
|
|
Of the multitudes of encryption algorithms today, 448-bit Blowfish encryption stands out as the industry leader. |
» For data storage, Norton
uses 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
encryption. 256-bit AES encryption is the
encryption standard adopted by the US
government. However, Carbonite and Mozy both
use 448-bit Blowfish encryption when storing
your information in their datacenters. Of the
multitudes of encryption algorithms today,
448-bit Blowfish encryption stands out as the
industry leader.
Given that my
top priority is the security of my files, Carbonite and
Mozy seemed to be better choices since these two companies use maximum encryption
technology for data security.
Carbonite and Mozy
both scored in this area.
Read Part 2
|
Carbonite Offer Code 2013
Read What Our Readers Have To Say
About Our Online Backup Review
