Simple Security: Automatic Off-Site Computer Backups

I cannot stress just how important it is to backup your computers often and in multiple places. Computer hard drives fail more often than anyone would like to admit, and having several separate backups of all your important documents, photos, and music can ensure that you never lose any of it in the event of a computer crash, fire, or theft. While I have written here before about having a backup hard drive in your home that you back up to daily, you also should consider having an off-site backup that constantly (and behind the scenes) backs up the contents of your computer’s hard drive. I have a good friend who lost both the internal drive of his iMac and his backup drive in his home office on the same day. Talk about coincidence! So while for most people a single backup is usually enough to recover from a simple computer disaster (not theft or fire, though), he lost his primary and backup drive at once; if that was all he had for backups he would have lost everything. Luckily, he was using an off-site backup service as well, so he contacted them and had DVD’s made of all his files and mailed to his house so he could put everything back on his new computer.

There are many solid options out there for off-site computer backups, but I have been using BackBlaze without fail or falter for over a year now. For $5 a month, it backs up my computer on a daily basis without my even knowing it’s doing it. Simplicity! For $60/year, it’s a piece of mind that I am absolutely willing to pay for as my entire life is inside my MacBook. Any time I want I can log in to their website and look at my files, access them, download them, or just make sure that my computer is still backing up every day (it hasn’t ever missed a day, FYI.) It even lets you “find your computer” should it get stolen away from you.

If you aren’t doing off-site computer backups, I highly recommend you start doing them right away. No one thinks their computer and hard drive will fail on the same day, or that their house will burn down with both inside, or that your home office will be burglarized. But stuff happens — and if you are anything like me you have a lot of important data on your computer you can’t afford to lose. So simplify your computer security with off-site, automatic backups as soon as you can. You never know when you may need it!

One Response
  1. April 4, 2013

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