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Tuesday, 08 November 2005 |
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Page 1 of 9 Backups are critical these days, when a large portion of our personal and business information is stored in digital format. Imagine loosing your sales presentation, accounting information AND all the contact information of your business associates and friends. Now imagine this happening during a time of crisis, when you need this information the most.
We think Murphy had backups in mind, when he came up with "If anything can go wrong, it will".
Backups have been around for as long as we can remember. Human beings backed up their knowledge by passing it on to the next generation. Digital data has been backed up on cards, removable spindles, floppy drives, tapes and other media since it existed.
In recent times, re-writable media like CDs and DVDS, low cost backup / external drives and USB flash drives have made it possible for everyone to effortlessly backup their information and in most cases restore it or access it easily when needed, on other computers.
Unfortunately, these media are usually kept within the proximity of the computer, home or the office. Few individuals and small businesses move their backups regularly to offsite locations. A recent advertisement that was placed by us, when we were looking for writers, resulted in us getting a number of emails from potential candidates who were affected by Katrina with responses like “sorry, but I lost my resume and my writing samples when my house got flooded”.
As technology progresses, storage becomes cheaper, and bandwidth becomes faster, regular and secure online backups become more and more feasible. This data can now be saved and restored thanks to user-friendly software and fast broadband connections, to virtually any desktop, usually within the hour if not quicker.
The advantage of these offsite backups now outweigh cost and security concerns.
Our reviews cover a range of services and alternatives which allow you to backup AND restore all or part of your data.
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