How To Back Up a Hard Drive Online
While the amount of data we all consume and store on a daily basis now, safety of the storage has become very important. Hard drives can house terabytes of data now, which is very convenient, but also makes the data vulnerable because only if one hard drive fails, you may end up losing valuable data gathered over years. Hence, it is prudent to always back up your data regularly as a precaution. External hard drives are good alternatives for data back up, but they are also susceptible to failure and physical damage. Given the proliferation of internet and high bandwidth connections today, the prospect of uploading your data to online servers has become more feasible. Online backups offer more security and convenience. You do not have to carry any drives with you and companies which host data servers have security measures in place for protection of your data.
Instructions
-
1
Uploading your whole hard drive online will require considerable storage capacity. There are several online services available, such as Jungle Disk, CrashPlan, Carbonite. These charge monthly and yearly fees and provide different storage packages. Unlimited storage usually costs around $5 per month or $50 a year. Take your time and go through the packages offered and choose one suited to your needs.
-
2
If you are looking to back up digital media, you will need more storage and the unlimited storage option would serve you well. You can sign up with any of the online data backup services (some also offer trial periods) and download their clients. These software clients manage data exchange from your computer to the online server.
-
3
However, if you are simply looking back up your important documents, you may want to go with a cheaper (or free alternative). Microsoft’s SkyDrive offers up to 25 GBs of storage capacity which you can use to store your documents and files online.
-
4
Google Drive is also an excellent option to backup important documents. These can also be accessed, edited and shared directly online. Protection of your documents in the free services mentioned above depends on your account security (Microsoft Live or Gmail) since these are linked to your accounts.
-
5
Most ISP services also provide online storage for hosting your files. If you have access to FTP storage space you can create a new network place and copy your documents to the online storage. This however is not so secure a method and usually storage space is limited.
