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Welcome
Would
you believe that I've been publishing this ezine for
nearly 2 years? I've been thinking about a blog for
a long time, and I got a taste of writing one, and I
really like it. So I've decided that I'm going to transition
to being a blogger. In January, you'll get an email
message just as you do now, but I will gently lead you
to my blog with a link. Can I ask you to go to the extra
effort of pressing a link next time? I hope so. Here's
a preview: My
Blog.
That's
not all that is new. I've revamped my website with a
new style, colors, and a lot more content. It's taken
me several months (whew!), and I'm so happy to finally
go live. Let me know what you think! http://www.itsvirtuallydone.com.
Meanwhile, let's continue with that topic that I started
about taking care of your computer.
Computer
Check-up Part II
Last
month I outlined my Top 7 Things that I think we should
be doing to take care of our computers. (See last
month's article.) The number one thing that I think
we should be doing, is safeguarding our information
by backing up what we care about (our photos, intellectual
property, emails, calendar, etc.) – anything that
we don't want to lose.
I've
written previously about how I back up to an external
hard drive (See
previous article). I still think that's great in
the event of a hard drive crash. But then I thought,
what about a fire, natural disaster, or the more probable:
theft? Sure, I could back up to CDs and dutifully take
them to my safety deposit box, but not likely. I'm not
convinced of the reliability of CDs either. The logical
next step was to consider backing up online.
I
read articles and websites about backing up online.
My biggest hurdle was in determining how much space
I needed. What's great is that many companies give you
a free trial for 15-30 days, and really that's the best
way to determine how much space you need to backup:
doing it. And determining what to backup on your system
is really half the battle.
I
decided to back up the following:
*
All my data files and my clients'
* My email
* My photos
* My calendar
* My contact management program
* My financial data
It
took some investigating to figure out where all the
data for every program is stored. Some are easier than
others. I ended up setting up automatic backups for
certain programs, and had the backups stored in a place
that would automatically get saved by the online backup
system. I figured that the worst case scenario would
be paying for an online backup system, and then figuring
out that what you needed wasn't there.
Next,
I analyzed 5 companies for cost, storage amount, how
long their free trial lasted, and how much space they
would let me use during the free storage time. Here's
who I looked at:
Data
Deposit Box:
http://www.datadepositbox.com/
Recommended by PC World. A great option if you only
have a little bit of data to back up. They are still
1 cent per meg. They determine for you the popular storage
locations for your important files. Backups take place
when your computer is idle. A colleague of mine likes
their service.
@Backup:
http://www.atbackup.com/
I have colleagues that use their service and like them.
I found them too expensive for how much storage capacity
I needed. They cost about $150 annually for 1 GB of
storage. Since I'm using about 2.4 GB, I'd have to jump
up to their 5 GB of storage, which would cost about
$500 per year.
XDrive:
http://xdrive.com/
I did a trial with Xdrive, and it didn't work out for
me. It was taking forever to upload my files. I contacted
their customer service, and I didn't get a timely response.
(I always contact customer service during my trials
just to see how things go.) In hindsight, my uploading
problems may have been related to my firewalls, but
I needed someone to help me when it was convenient for
me, and that didn't happen.
EZ
Backup: http://ezbackup.com/
This company's pricing plan just didn't match up with
my storage needs. Their customer service hours are geared
toward east coast customers. They claim to be PC Magazine's
editor's choice, but they didn't link up to the published
article, and I couldn't find it, so that puzzled me.
IBackup:
http://ibackup.com/
This outfit is recommended by PC Magazine and links
to the article recommending them. Their economy plan
is $10 a month for 5 GB of storage. A respected colleague
uses them, so I gave them a try. I uploaded with ease,
and used their customer service (west coast based) a
couple of times with good results.
So
I signed up for IBackup for a year, and for less than
$100 per year, I have peace of mind. I like that I get
an email every morning letting me know how many files
were backed up. Occasionally I get a file that can't
back up and I can look into it.
Whatever
company that you go with, I recommend that in addition
to putting their customer service to the test, you do
a test to restore a file to your Destop/laptop, just
to be sure.
I
hope I've encouraged you to back up regularly in some
fashion. I don't think that you'll regret it.
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