Cloud Backups

By Robert Sanborn

Backing up your files in the cloud is getting more and more popular with a ton of offerings available.  Unless you are just backing up a few files and documents, cloud backup can be very slow because it really depends on how fast you are connected to the outside world. If you are among 4+ million people still using dial up, you will just have to wait. DSL users are also going to have a long slow go of it and with the wide variety of “high speed” internet connections out there, you also may find it is too slow for backing up your computer.  And my initial reaction is so what. 

Full image backups of a computer work great if you are going to just replace a crashed hard drive. Something else goes wrong with that computer and likely is not, you will be replacing it with a new computer and that full image backup becomes worthless. So, does that mean you need two sets of backup strategies? Maybe so. I am using cloud strategies more and more for things I want to share with my notebook, smart phone, and other portable and connected devices that I use. For that, it works great and you can use any of the big three of Google Cloud, Microsoft Skydrive, or Apple’s iCloud. For around 5 gig of storage, they won’t cost you a cent.

For a more automated backup strategy, look at either SugarSync www.sugarsync.com or SafeSync https://www.safesync.com from Trend Micro. Both are very highly rated.