Sunday, August 13, 2006

Free Online Backup - Completely Private (Encrypted)

Why backup online? Can you say "Hurricane Katrina?" (Or fill in your own natural disaster. And don't forget fire, theft, terrorism, etc.) One rule of computer backup is to keep your backups somewhere else.

There are a number of online backup services springing up, but Mozy Backup is the only one I've seen that (1) gives you a really substantial free allocation, and (2) lets you encyrpt your backup data.

Point #1 is very nice -- you can back up 2 GB worth of data 100% free. And if you join by clicking any link in this blog entry (like here), you'll get 2.25 GB instead of just 2 GB. Don't backup your entire system disk -- just your important data. It's pretty easy to pick and choose which folders to back up. After the first "big bang" backup, it just transmits the changes, which goes pretty quickly.

Point #2 can be important for privacy. If you choose the option of supplying your own encryption key (i.e., password), then no one can get it -- not even with a government subpoena. And they use a really, really strong encryption code that realistically, no one is going to crack in your lifetime.

And yes, they have a paid service, which lets you back up 30 GB for $4.95 a month. Some people need it, some don't.

Oh, and every time you refer someone else who starts using the service, you and they both get 256 MB more space. So maybe you can get all the space you need, free.

Here's the link again : mozy.com

1 Comments:

At 5:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Take a look at one of the pioneer online storage and backup service provider, IBackup. With IBackup for Windows you can perform interactive and scheduled backups of critical files to your online backup account with IBackup for Windows.

With its Windows like user interface you can drag and drop files to get them backed up or to restore them. IBackup for Windows transfers only modified portions of your files to ensure a quick backup with compression/ decompression on the fly. You can receive desktop or email notifications on your scheduled backups or restores. You can keep the 'Mirror Path' option (default) so that the entire source path can be duplicated for your backups and to avoid any overwriting and restore files from previous versions (Snapshots) of files backed up.

Using IDrive you can map your online IBackup account as a network drive on your computer. You can then drag and drop files to the IBackup account from the Windows explorer. It also allows you to open and save files stored in their IBackup online backup/ storage accounts directly from their associated applications like Microsoft Office. You can manage all your favorite multimedia files with either IDrive Multimedia or Web-Manager, a browser-based application. With the latter, you can create sharable links and email these to friends and colleagues.

 

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