Where’s the best place to keep your data? Online backup services will keep your data safe no matter what sort of disaster strikes your local computers. Online backup services work much like regular backup software. With an online backup service, however, your important data is transmitted over the Internet and securely stored on a server in a professional data center instead of being stored on your own CDs, DVDs, or backup tapes. Most of us still waste time doing this manually which means we often don’t have a backup of our most recent work.
Ten of the top choices for online backup service are:
1. Mozy
Mozy offers reasonably priced unlimited online backup that’s highly configurable, but it could stand some usability improvements.
2. Carbonite
Carbonite tries to make remote backup simple and affordable. Setting it up is a breeze, and restoring a file here or there is also a snap. But restoring a lot of data to a different PC presented some obstacles.
3. SOS Online Backup
This is another backup service that offers a lot of additional features for those users who want to do a lot with the service. It tends to be more user-friendly than IDrive according to most people, though, so you may find that it’s the better of the two choices if you’re just starting out and aren’t quite confident in your own tech-savvy skills. It’s received numerous awards so it’s certainly a good choice.
4. IDrive
There are several reasons that you might enjoy this backup service. It’s got some storage offered entirely for free so it’s great if you’re just starting to figure out whether online backup is even for you or not. It’s also got a lot of great additional features (like advanced search functions and drag-and-drop restoration) that can be used by people who do already like online backup and who want to be able to do more with it.
5. HP Upline
This easy-to-use, reasonably priced online backup service also lets you do local media backups and file sharing, but it lacks important features, like version saving, open-file backup, and the ability to resume interrupted file uploads
The type of online backup service that you want to get is really going to depend a lot on what you need it for. If you’re storing a lot of media then you want a service with a lot of storage. If you’re storing documents that you share with others then you want a backup service that has collaboration features. These five choices are a good place to start in your search for online backup options.
