Unless your computer's hard drive is solid-state, it's a very fragile piece of equipment. There are any number of things that could happen to make it stop working, and getting your files back isn't always easy. Often companies will charge hundreds of pounds to recover data off broken disks, and even then they're not guaranteed to rescue everything. Online backup solutions are the perfect alternative, allowing you to backup your files to servers on the Internet so that they can be accessed even if your hard drive breaks. Here are 5 ways to backup your files online.
DropBox
DropBox is one of the original file backup services, and it has remained quite primitive (although very popular) over the years. DropBox is a free service that gives you 2GB of space to upload practically any files you want. You can get additional space by referring friends, or by paying a monthly fee ($99 a year for 50GB, $199 a year for 100GB). If you just want a simple service for backing up some documents, then DropBox is a good place to start. However, if you are looking to backup important or large files, there are far better solutions out there, especially given that DropBox does not encrypt your files to protect them.
Windows SkyDrive
To use Windows SkyDrive you must have a Windows Live account (if you have a Hotmail account or .NET passport then you already have one). Like DropBox, there is a free service, but this gives you 7GB of space to use. Space upgrades are also cheaper, with an additional 20GB costing £6 a year, 50GB costing £16 a year, and 100GB costing £32 a year. The downside to SkyDrive is that the upload process is done via Silverlight in the web browser, so you have to manually backup each file when it changes. As with DropBox, encryption also isn't an option.
Mozy
Mozy will backup any type of file to its servers, and has the added bonus of using encryption before and during transmit. 50GB of space will cost you £4.99 a month and will only let you backup one computer, whilst 125GB of space will cost you £7.99 a month and allow you to backup files from up to three computers. Mozy is a very flexible option, allowing you to add an additional computer or 20GB of space for only £1.75 a month more, and comes with a host of extra features like incremental backups (only backing up the changes in files rather than the entire files again), which saves you bandwidth.
Carbonite
Different to other backup services, Carbonite offers unlimited space for your backups, but charges per year rather than monthly. The more years you pay for upfront, the less you have to pay overall, meaning this makes it a great long term investment. A year of backups costs £41.95, two years costs £75.95, and three years costs £101.95. The only downside is the encryption used, which is weaker than that used by Mozy. If you have a lot of files to backup, Carbonite is the most cost effective solution for you.
CrashPlan PROe
CrashPlan look like a business only backup service, but they are open to personal use as well. Their smallest plan (100GB for £5 a month) is a good deal, and like Carbonite, they offer unlimited storage for a larger price (£99 a year). The encryption used is also very strong, and allows you to choose your own key if you don't want CrashPlan to access your files in storage. The CrashPlan backup utility also lets you backup to other sources, such as external media drives. Overall, CrashPlan is a great solution for the average user who wants to securely backup their data.
