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Data Backup Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

By Kristin Gabriel

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Published: 10Nov2010
Word count: 636
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The online storage market has evolved and is growing exponentially as our society becomes more paperless. Today, we are becoming ultra-connected, digitally dependant users. People want to have confidence that their personal and business files and data are securely backed up, and that they can access their information anytime, from anywhere.

The practice of backing up data via a network or the Internet to a remote location can protect against everything from a device's failure, or a fire, or theft. Remote backup services are now more available and affordable for corporate and home users all over the world. In fact, according to IDC, online storage backup is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33.3 percent to $715M in the United States in the year 2011.

There are many benefits of online storage of data "in the cloud." If you have ever experienced data loss, you will quickly agree that data loss protection is the number one need. It protects users from computer crashes, hard drive failures, and natural or man-made disasters. All of this can lead to the loss of data and the need to recover, which can badly affect you monetarily as well as emotionally.

During the last couple of decades, many have used external hard drives to provide secure protection from data loss. The problem is that these drives don't allow remote access to files wherever the individual may be. Plus they often fail, jam up, or simply burn out, making all the data stored on them inaccessible. The latest social media applications and social networks allow friends and family members access to your pictures, but that can be a security risk and these platforms can have a limited amount of storage space.

Online storage backup enables convenient, fast, easy, and more secure file sharing. Until recently data backup services offered only file storage, file sharing, automatic backups, remote file access, and file uploading and downloading. Now, security is a big issue for organizations, so virus protection and secure storage are becoming mandatory features.

There are a few online storage services that are free and only charge a small fee for additional storage space. Storage services should be as easy to use as possible. Technical support is a big plus, in case users have questions about backing up their files properly. Tutorials and customer service hotlines, or email and chat support can be very helpful.

The best online storage services provide the following:
1. Easy to use, non-technical, friendly Web interface.
2. A full-featured web-based file manager so that files can be viewed directly on the web interface without downloading.
3. Continuous and automatic backup and sync capabilities.
4. The ability to stream video and music directly online.
5. A recycle bin and unlimited versioning.
6. Easy access to manage files and folders from anywhere with an Internet connection and HTML browser.

Always look for online storage that can install a virtual drive enabling access to files just like a regular hard drive, even when you're not connected to Internet. It should be able to be installed on up to three computers and synchronized across multiple computers.

All of the files and folders on your computer should be automatically backed up while you work and all files should be automatically scanned for malware and viruses. Your folders should be synchronized between your computers ensuring that your latest files are always where you are. And you should be able to easily find your files within your account with a full search.

You should be getting data transferred using the same 256-bit AES encryption used by banks. Plus it would be a great feature if the online storage service that you choose automatically creates duplicate copies and recovers historic versions of your files and folders. So you are able to restore if you accidently delete a file.

Kristin Gabriel is a marketer for Trend Micro, a global leader in content security. SafeSync is its economically priced online digital data backup service for storing irreplaceable documents, photos, videos, and music in a single safe remote data storage location that's administered by Trend Micro.

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