Protecting Digital Media Online

So you’re working on your latest project on your computer, be it personal, or the next brilliant idea for your business, and suddenly it dawns on you… What am I going to do if I lose all this information? Its reality… it actually just happened to me. My PC crashed and I lost nearly ALL of my important documents, pictures, writings, music files, you name it… nearly all of them are in the wind.

What I did manage to do was anticipate my computer’s demise and save some (but not all) of the most important flies onto a couple of thumb drives, that was all I knew to do at the time. However, my largest files were either too big to fit on the thumb drives, or I simply forgot to move them over. I currently have two options to retrieve the data I lost, one being to have the hard drive brought into a specialist and hope the data can be extracted, second, to start again. Oh if I had known then what I know now! While in the market for my next computer I came across an interesting concept, one that I knew large businesses used, but I never thought of it for small business or personal use.

Protecting Digital Media is a very present issue with today’s consumer. There are two real ways to do it, you can buy an external hard drive and save everything there so that if the computer itself goes south, you have that hard drive with all of your information available…unless you have a break in, or a fire, or if you actually run off of a server…then everything is lost. The other option, the one I would like to explore with you now is Online Digital Media Storage. It seems almost hourly there is a new company popping up offering to host all of your data for a nominal fee. By doing this, you can access your stored and backed up data from almost anywhere at any time, and with regularly scheduled backups at the most you’ll be losing only a very small portion of your work.

So what is Online Digital Media Storage? Well, it’s actually quite simple in concept. It is a program that you can install on your computer that will back up and copy any or all of your files to be saved on a secure server that is maintained by a company that specializes in Digital Media Storage. These programs can automatically detect a change in a file that is being backed up and re-save the data to this off site location, or can run on a designated schedule. Should anything happen to your computer or server you can dial into any of your backed up files and recover them wherever and whenever you need them. This is also actually handy for those that travel and may need the extra data storage.

In searching for an option so that I don’t have to face this situation again I came across five companies that seem to all offer a wide variety of options. I am not suggesting the use of any one particular company I would just like to give you some options as you consider Online Digital Media Storage for your own purposes. I have them listed in alphabetical order for ease of reference.

Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) : Offers a fifteen day free trial, and an online back up system that runs automatically as you work. For a flat monthly rate you can have unlimited space to back up any and all forms of data. Should you need to, you can access your files from anywhere there is an internet connection. They also offer double encryption for the added security of your data.

IDrive (www.idrive.com): Offers 2GB of data storage free of charge, IDrive also offers a graduated scale in pricing depending on the amount of data you would like to store up to 50 GB. The pricing does vary depending on business or personal use. The also have a very easy to find customer service number that is open 6am to 6pm PST.

Mozy (www.Mozy.com): Also offers home users 2GB of free storage, no questions asked. They’re software will only detect and back up files that have been changed since the initial backup, making your scheduled backups run quickly. For businesses they offer desktop and server licenses and charge you based on a per GB scale. All new and existing customers can take contact customer service either by phone or online chat during normal business hours.

Safe Backup (www.safebackup.com): Offers new clients a 30 day free trial. Claims immediate restoration of any lost data to any location. Also states that they have off site data protection to multiple data centers as well as high security end to end data encryption. Multiple computers can be assigned to one account, and is HIPPA compliant (something for those of you in the medical field). Also Safe Backup has 24/7/365 technical support/backup restoration.

SOS Online Backup (www.sosonlinebackup.com): Offers a free full downloadable features guide. One click sharing, unlimited versioning, iPhone accessibility, and unlimited archiving are just a few of this company’s features. They have also been written up in PC Online Magazine for the last three years as Editor’s Choice.¹ The SOS Online Backup website also offers free demo’s and detailed screenshots to give you an idea of what their software is like.

I personally could see my PC and I doing business with any one of these companies, they all offer very similar products so you would have to go and check each one out for yourself to see which features are appropriate for your own personal or business use. The one thing I will strongly suggest is that no one fall victim to the crash of their hard drive (or server) like I did, and look into some kind of alternative data storage.