Backing up your data at a remote site

I have one machine in my house that is the central repository for all of my important personal data. Here I am talking primarily about MY PICTURES, MY MOVIES, and MY MUSIC.

These three folders account for roughly 75 GB of data. Additionally I have about 25 GB in other personal data. Included in this extra 25 GB are all of the files I have determined to be important enough to keep down through all of my years working and playing in data processing.

I have written in this blog about my Western Digital 1 TB MyBook external hard drive. For the past several years this (and before it several smaller drives) external drive has been my primary backup.

The MyBook drive is still running. Two things: I have found that 1 TB isn't all that much when used to backup data from several home computers, including mine, and TWO, it is bound to fail sometime AND it is LOCAL.

I have long recognized the need I have, and maybe you have the same need, to maintain a backup of my data on a REMOTE system.

I wish I could have had the luxury of testing the major remote backup offerings like SOS Online Backup, Carbonite, and Mozy. But being one person with my small commercial venture, I did not. I instead attended a Webinar sponsored by SOS Online Backup, and some time later came to an agreement with SOS's management that enabled me to use their product with terms and conditions acceptable to me.

So here I am at the end of 2011 telling you that I am an SOS Online Backup user, and I am satisfied that I have all 75 GB of my most valuable data backed up somewhere in The Cloud.

If it is not intuitively obvious to you why I wanted to have a remote backup site, it is because my primary data and all of its backup was right inside my house, and if anything happened to my house, I would lose all of that data.

I have learned a lot about remote backup, and I will be happy to share my experiences and make recommendations to you over the next month or so. You shouldn't go into this blind and you should not rely solely on the management of the backup company to take full responsibility for your data. You need to be involved and take that responsibility.

I believe I wrote some time ago about the owner of a small company which had all of its financial data stored offsite. When their local computer failed and they had to restore their data, they found out that the data they needed was not there at the remote site! They had to manually enter a full year's worth of data into their financial systems in order to restore their books. You mustn't let this happen to you and this is where I will be making some recommendations, so please stand by.

In the meantime, I have to say I have no experience with Carbonite or Mozy or any other backup service except SOS Online Backup. They now hold my precious 75 GB of data that I do not want to lose, and I feel good about SOS and I feel my data is safe and that they will continue to backup any additional data as I add it to my system.