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 Backing up your computer system using a hard disk or CDs/DVDs is soooo last decade, right? With recent advances in access to high-speed networking, this option is attractive to more and more people making online backup a viable option for anyone wishing to protect their computer data but not wanting to worry about maintaining the hardware needed to make those backups. If you’re wondering what online backup is all about, here is information on the basics of online backup to help you get started.
Online backup is simply making a copy of your data to a different computer (called a server) that is accessed using a network connection. This copy could be as simple as only a few documents to as complex as an entire hard disk. Online backup is often associated with a service provider via the internet. That is, you pay a service provide a certain fee in order for them to store a certain amount of data that you can back up to, and restore from, when necessary. In other cases, online backup may be accessed in a business where the business has the online backup servers in a safe location, protected from physical harm. In either case, the backed-up data is stored on a server that is located in a physically different location from the original data. This offers a significant level of protection from physical damage to the original data due to disasters such as fire, flood or theft. The original data and equipment may be lost, but the data copy is safely stored offsite.
This last fact is important—offsite backup. Many people feel quite comfortable with backing up their data to a secondary hard disk, or to a set of CDs or DVDs. Then, they’ll put those backup copies on a shelf, secure in the belief that they’ve secured themselves from disaster. But what happens if there is a fire, flood, earthquake or other physical calamity? The backup media can be destroyed along with the system that housed the original data as well. An offsite backup eliminates this worry—you can usually access your online backup from anywhere you can access a network and get to the online backup service. Online backup service providers will typically use an Internet connection to provide this access.
Online backup is often associated with a system where data is periodically sent to the online backup service. A program will run on the system with the original data. This program sends data on a periodic basis, behind the scenes, to the server that runs the online backup service. In this situation, the user doesn’t even need to take steps to backup their system—the online backup is running silently in the background, providing protection without any user interaction. In other cases, the user may have to specify that they want to trigger the backup. The user specifies that they want to start the backup, and the system connects to the online backup service and makes the copy, often unattended by the user.
Online backup can typically handle just about any kind of data you throw its way. Data is data is data—it is all the same to the online backup. So you can typically backup just your data files to the programs themselves that created your data. It’s really up to your online backup service. You’ll want to check with the provide of your online backup to see if there are any limitations to what you can backup and store on its servers.
One concern that many people have is related to the speed of the backup. That is, how long will this online backup take? Of course, this is directly related to the speed of your network connection to the online backup and the amount of data that is backed up. A dial up internet connection will certainly take longer to back up data than a high-speed internet connection, given the same amount of data. Typically you will want to employ a backup strategy that does not back up all your data but instead uses a differential or incremental strategy in order to minimize the amount of data that is sent for backup. In both of these strategies, you start with a full backup of some sort, and then only data that is changed from that full backup is put into the online backup.
Finally, you’ll want to consider how secure your online backup solution is. Providers that offer online backup typically encrypt (scramble) your data as it is sent over the network and stored on their servers. You, as a user, have the code to decrypt (unscramble) the data when you need to restore it from the online service provider. However, in all cases, be aware that you will want to thoroughly check how your online backup provider encrypts their data and their related privacy and security policies and practices.
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