By Chris Botterill

A couple of months back my hard drive ‘shit the bed’ right in the middle of my work day. It was one thing to interrupt my work day with a problem that would take an entire day to fix, but quite another to realize I had lost about eight years of personal and business data without warning.

Losing everything important to you on your computer makes you feel like you lost a part of your life – videos and images of your kids you looked forward to watching when they got older; all your applications and software; electronic financial statements that will cost a fortune to order from your bank again because they won’t let you download them again (too easy I guess).

It doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, you can get pissed about losing time at work or having to spend a small fortune on repairing your computer – but you can get over the fact that your data has been destroyed – as long as you backup!

If you are thinking: “Backing up takes time and some form of technical expertise – I’m practically the computer anti-Christ” – I hear ya. I fixed personal and corporate computers for years and have seen more than one ‘broken computer’ that simply wasn’t plugged in. But what if I told you there was a way you could easily backup – without even knowing it was happening – and being one of those “my computer is broken – oh, it needs to be plugged in?” type of person.

Enter the solution: Online backup

Online backup has actually been around for years but until about four to five years ago did it actually become economically feasible for the average computer owner to use it.

The principle of online backup is very simple – install a piece of software and it will always run in the background when you are online. The software backs up your files and folders and uploads them to a server safely half way across the world over the internet. If your hard drive fails, simply download the backup, live happily ever after.

Needless to say, the idea of never having to insert a CD, DVD or attach other media to your computer to backup your system is very exciting. No more six month “oops, I forgot to backup” or “I’ll pick up some CDs later” excuses.

Another great benefit to online backup is that it stores your data offsite. While most people lose their data to hard drive crashes, there are a lot of people that have had their computer (laptops, etc.) stolen, or destroyed in fires, floods and whatever else Mother Nature can dish out. Your online back saves your data in a location that is potentially halfway across the world from you.

What you should do to save your ass

The first thing you need to do is accept that losing all of your computer data is not an option. Don’t argue with me. It isn’t.

The next thing you have to do is realize that while almost everything on the internet is free these days – most online backup is not free. Digital media takes up a lot of space with today’s high tech cameras, etc. and it’s fair that these backup companies are compensated fairly for it.

The last thing you need to do is follow my advice. I may be cursed for a lot of things but I feel unbelievably comfortable that if you listen to me now, you will probably thank me one day.

Online backup services – the choices

There are a lot of choices when it comes to online backup. So far, I have only used two providers and I am extremely satisfied with who I currently use. For those who know me, they would believe me when I say I spent weeks evaluating my options. While my favorite may not be the best choice for you – it certainly is the best for me.

BackBlaze.com: They preach simplicity and they aren’t lying. They started in 2007 and they provide a service that has no limits – literally. You can backup data until your ISP calls you to complain you are using too much bandwidth – and BackBlaze happily continues to store your data. They also don’t “slow your backup speed down” because you have gone over a limit. Yup – backup an unlimited amount of data as fast as you can. A nerd’s wet dream.
The part people will like most about backblaze is their pricing model. The most expensive package they offer is $5 per month (per computer). Buy for a year (or two) and save over a dollar more per month. Awesome.

Carbonite.com: From what I understand about this company – they are the closest competitor to BackBlaze in options and price (they also let you back up an unlimited amount of data). At $59 per year they are pretty affordable. But one of the sticking points (for me at least) is that as soon as you back up over a certain amount of data they will start to throttle your backup speeds. In other words, if you need a lot of backup space, and you want it to get backed up as quickly as possible – they will limit the speed in which your data gets backed up. For most users, this is probably a non-point, but why bother with this problem if you have an easy alternative?
Nonetheless, I would put Carbonite up there with BackBlaze. Most forums and people chatting about this service have pretty decent reviews.

Crashplan.com: This is a really cool concept and service, and I could see how a lot of people could get excited about how it works. But the reality here is that I am evaluating online backup services that allow you to backup to external servers, so I will skip past the part where you can backup to other computers you own for free and get into the direct comparison part of this.
If you compare their “unlimited” plan to the first two options it’s pretty competitive – $50.00 per year per computer for unlimited backup. It also doesn’t appear they throttle your upload speeds like crashplan.
But one of the unique features that I like about these guys is that they offer a family plan – and if you have multiple computers that need to be backed up I can see that being a real “value saver”. They allow you to backup (unlimited amounts of data) between two to 10 computers for about $120/year. Again, from what I can see they don’t seem to have any restrictions.

Mozy.com: These are the bastards I left after they forced all of their customers to choose between paying their new prices for their unlimited backup model (which became severely limited) or leave. Since I would be paying about $650 per year, I chose to leave. I have nothing good to say about these guys at this point except that they served their purpose while they were competitive. Now, they can use the storage place I left them with to file away all the angry letters customers sent them after their shenanigans. Nuff said.

Miscellaneous options: Alright, I know that there are some of you reading this thinking that things should still be free – so here are a few other options that can help you do some “free backing up” if you don’t have a lot of data.
Option 1: Google Drive: Simply setup a Google account, activate your drive and then install the software. A new folder called “Google Drive” will be added to your documents folder and everything you backup in there will sync to your Google drive folder (up to 5GB). Nice thing about this is that you can access your files anywhere in the world online through your drive.
Option 2: Dropbox: A really nice app that works a lot like Google Drive. One of the core features that is simply to use with Dropbox is that it allows you “share” your files with other Dropbox users. You get up to 2GB for free before having to upgrade to the $10/mo price point.
Option 3: You tell me. I’ve given you a variety of options and if you know of something better I want to know too. Let me know in the comments.

So there you have it – online backup in a nutshell. If I confused you I am sorry – but I have to ask why you have read this far if you are confused. If I helped you, then great! I’ll drink one beer for each positive comment I receive (not all in one sitting).

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