Backup is a very important part of using a computer, especially when all of your schoolwork and notes are stored on it. While it is possible to backup by burning files to CDs and DVDs this is very hard to do. Not that it is technically complicated, rather it requires consistency which isn't very easy. Also, external hard drives can be used to backup large amounts of data. While this is a great way to backup, it suffers from many of the problems the original data suffers from such as damage, theft, or failure.

To really have a backup, the information needs to be stored off site, away from the primary copy of the data. While this is easy for large businesses, it has never been possible for the lay user to do until now.

In this episode, three services were covered: Jungle Disk, Mozy, and Carbonite.

Jungle Disk is the most technical of the services requiring an Amazon S3 account and is pay per use. The software is only a one time purchase of $20. While this is a good choice for technical users, it is not as simple as some of the other services. However, this service is also appealing to users who do not have a large number of files to backup because of its pay-per-use nature.

Mozy is an online backup service that is very simple to use. While the provide a free version which provides 2GB of backup, their full version costs about $5 a month. This service is nice, but not one of my favorites.

Carbonite is one of the better online backup services. Utilizing the unlimited flat fee model, it is very simple to use. While it costs $50 a year, it backups all of the documents on a computer and in the event of failure they can be easily restored. Carbonite also keeps several previous versions of documents, as does Mozy, so if a file gets accidentally overwritten it can be restored.

It is also important to note that all three of these services provide encryption so all of the backed up documents are safe both in transit and on the servers.

While it may seem to some that Online backup isn't ready for prime time, it is especially appealing to college students. Since being a full time student and using a Tablet PC in class produces a lot of very important data, having it safely stored somewhere else is good for peace of mind.

Online backup solutions were featured on the Revision3 show Tekzilla. The segment featured an email that I sent in!

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