Remote Backup Agent for Home and Small Business

Lets follow-up to my posting regarding Online Data Backup with a little story:

You buy a brand new computer and spend days getting it set-up just the way you want. You use it often for managing your finances, surfing the web, checking email, working with digital photos, etc. Then, all of the sudden, you experience something catastrophic and your blissful computer days come crashing to a halt:

• • Your “manufacturer installed” antivirus software stops working, and you either miss the warning or ignore it. Now your computer is virus-ridden and unusable!
  • Your hard drive crashes (this soon?!?!) and all is lost!
  • Some outside factor takes effect, such as a fire in your building or a stolen laptop.

I know many folks take for granted the true “value” of their electronic information (documents, photos, videos, etc). Personally, I would be devastated to lose my music collection and the photographic record of the greatest moments in the past 5 years of my life! I would despise having to recreate my resume and cover letters from scratch. I would not be happy to lose my quicken files, which contain all my transactions for the past 3 years (and give me a great record of spending habits).

In these instances, wouldn’t it be great if you had all your important files stored somewhere so that you could retrieve them when you got your computer back to a working state? Wouldn’t it be great if you had an undercover agent on your computer, constantly monitoring your files and making sure they’re securely backed up without any intervention from you? While there are a number of options for a Remote Backup Agent, I’ve narrowed my list of items to a few preferred options.

iDrive – iDrive has a plethora of options, and works with Windows and Macs (as well as Smartphones). I choose iDrive as a Remote Backup Agent for a number of options:

• Backup To External Hard Drive: Their iDrive Portable software is free, works with any external drive, and makes hands-free backup a breeze. This is the cheapest option if you already have a drive and are OK accepting the risk that your USB drive could go bad or be lost in a fire/stolen/etc.
• Remote Backup (Basic): Their basic account allows you to backup up to 2GB of data from a remote backup agent on one computer for FREE! Yes, that’s free remote backup folks!
• Remote Backup Pro (Personal): Their Pro account for personal use steps up to 150Gb of storage for only $50/year. This is a fairly cheap upgrade if you outgrow the 2Gb limit of a basic account.
• Remote Backup Pro (Business): When it comes to business, the Remote Backup Agent provided by iDrive has too many features to list. If you want to dig into this, Contact Me.

BackBlaze – Simply put, it’s a Remote Backup Agent with unlimited storage for $5/month per computer (Windows and Mac). That’s a pretty amazing price for unlimited storage!

I recommend everyone think long and hard about the true value of your electronic data (docs, pictures, videos, and music). Even if you’re on the fence, I’d recommend at least setting up the iDrive Basic account and getting your semi-important information in an remote/online backup. Services to recover data from failed drives generally cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, and may not even be able to recover your information!

If you have any questions or need help setting up a Remote Backup Agent, Contact Me.

Related posts:

1. Remote Backup Agent – Supplemental
2. Remote Backup Supplemental: DropBox
3. How to Backup Computer with External USB Drive and iDrive Portable Software (eHow)
4. How to Choose Between Online Backup Service Providers (eHow)
5. 10 Behaviors of Highly-Effective Small Business IT (Part 2)