Kirk Mahoney . com

Do You Know Where Your Files Are?

Let’s cut to the chase: You ought to get online backup for your computers. There are many excuses for NOT getting it:

1. I don’t have time.
2. I already have backup software.
3. I sync my files to an external hard drive.
4. I don’t know where to start.

Let’s shoot down each of these excuses.

1. You will have lots of time for regret, if you don’t use online backup. Signing up takes just a few minutes.
2. That’s cool, but are you using it consistently? Even if you are, it’s good to have an automated fail-over, especially if fire or theft were to destroy or remove your backups.
3. I like synchronization programs, too. They’re great for duplicating files from one hard drive to another one, but they’re no substitute for consistent, frequent backups.
4. I’ve looked at a lot of services, and I can recommend two.

Which leads to my two recommendations:

• Carbonite
• Mozy

Please click each of the links and check out what each vendor offers. For $5/month, you can rest easy, knowing that your files always are backed up off-site. I use Carbonite on one PC and Mozy on two PCs. Carbonite has a two-year price that saves you 25%, but its interface is overly simplistic for my tastes. Mozy offers a 2GB version for free, but its more powerful interface intimidates some folks. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Important: You need an always-on, broadband connection to use either of these services. Don’t even think about trying to use dial-up service for online backups. Also, the faster your upload speed, the faster your initial backup will go. You can do the arithmetic to predict how long this will take.

For example, suppose your broadband service has a 256Kbps maximum upload speed. That’s 256,000 bits per second. Dividing by 8 bits in a byte, you get 32,000 bytes per second. Now, suppose you have 20 GB to back up. That’s 20,000,000,000 bytes (using the “1,000″ approach vs. the “1,024″ approach, for the techies out there). Divide that by 32,000 bytes per second, and you get 625,000 seconds. Dividing by 3600 seconds in an hour, you get 173.6111 hours, which is equivalent to 7.23 days. In other words, expect that it will take you at least one week to back up your 20 GB of files with your “256Kbps up” broadband service.

Throw in the fact that you won’t always reach the maximum upload speed, and you probably ought to expect your initial backup of 20 GB to take nine days. My real-world experience backing up 70 GB of precious digital photos and videos confirms this arithmetic.

You’re probably wondering:

• Does this long process start again every time that I change or add a file to my hard drive?
  – No. You have to endure this only for the initial backup. After that, the online backup service only backs up the new/changed files. Because it backs up files often and when your computer is not busy, each backup happens quickly and behind the scenes.
• Will it take this long to recover my files after a catastrophic event?
  – No. Most broadband services give you much faster download speeds than upload speeds. For example, with a “3Mbps down/256Kbps up” broadband service, you’ll be able to recover 20 GB in as little as fifteen hours (vs. nine days for initial backup).

For more thorough answers, and for answers to other questions, please visit the Carbonite or Mozy websites.

I might record a video and post it here so that you can see how these two services work. But, please don’t wait for the video. Get Carbonite or Mozy today!

Make sure those holiday photos and videos are backed up! Use the following discount code in December 2008 while signing up for either of these two MozyHome Unlimited subscriptions:

• DECEMBER - 10% off an annual subscription to MozyHome Unlimited
• DECEMBER - 10% off a biannual subscription to MozyHome Unlimited

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