The Advantages Of Off-Site Backup
Everybody who utilizes a computer for any reason ought to take backups. Even if you just play games on your computer, you will like to keep a note of your highest score and your place in the game, but if you run a business with that computer, then backups are even more vital. They are absolutely crucial.
Data is a vital instrument in any business and it is necessary for an IT business – it is the earnings stream, the more important your data is, the more you should treasure your data backups. Most people keep their data backups on removable disks – thirty years ago it would have been on tape or 4.25 inch floppy disks; twenty years ago, it would have been on 2.5 inch disks and ten years ago until now on CD.
However, none of these media is totally safe. Data on these traditional media is subject to deterioration, a sort of natural wastage. However, they can also be destroyed in a fire or by magnetic fields, be stolen or be lost. This is not really an acceptable situation for a business that depends on its data.
So what is the answer? IT specialists have been struggling with that question for fifty years. Off-site storage is one answer. This means that you make at least two backups of your data at given points during the day, place one in your office safe and send one by courier to a safe storage depot owned either by yourself or by a data storage company.
This is still the system that most companies use, if they back up their data on a ordinary basis at all. It is inexpensive and at least two times as safe as storing your backup data on the office premises. After all, it is extremely unlikely that two buildings will burn down or get robbed on the same day.
However, that still relies on the data being backed up properly. For data to be securely backed up, it should be backed up and then verified. If you have much data this can become a lengthy process if you just have one or two aging PC’s in the office. If this is the case, individuals frequently skip verification or merely back up in the correct manner once a week.
I have been in both these situation. Fifteen years ago, I did not verify our company data and had three months of unusable rubbish, when our hard drive crashed, because I had not verified it and something was wrong with the back up program and ten years ago, I had a good backup, but it was a week old and had to pay my secretary a week’s overtime to re-input that week’s data.
These days, I create all my backups by the book, but by a new procedure. I now use a cloud drive. This sounds fanciful, but what it means is that i send my data to another firm somewhere in the world automatically over the Internet every day. It occurs in the background automatically. You just set the program up, tell it what data to backup and off it goes.
This is the best form of data backup that I have ever discovered and it is cheap to free. A number of firms offer free storage up to a limited amount of bandwidth or data storage capacity. Merely type ‘cloud data storage’ into a search engine. Now all you have to worry about is what happens if the Net goes down.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with the Microsoft Antivirus Software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software Suite

June 24, 2011 | Posted by Owen Jones
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