Online backup - Store your mission critical data with confidence

Online back up has many benefits, over the more traditional inhouse facilities. If you are not already storing your data, why not, but... there has never been a better time to start. There are plenty of online backup facilities available www.Carbonite.com,www.SquirrelSave.co.uk www.mozy.com to name a few found with a Google search.

I have used one recently that requires a simple piece of software on your computer. It then organises the files to backup and does the rest for you. Its low cost and the great thing is that you don't have to take the tapes off site.

There are some rules that need to be followed in order to make it cheap and lower risks.
1. Ensure everyone saves their data on to one computer (the server) on your network. This helps to reduce the cost as a number of providers charge per computer.
2. Make sure everyone saves work on to the server at all times or at least whenever possible. One of my employees lost 2 weeks work because he had been working on a piece for some time and not storing it on to the server. The hard drive went and so did the work.
3. Check that you can retrieve the data from your storage facility. No point storing if you cannot get it back.
4. Don't assume the software will capture everything, they typically have a configuration process which may need a little tweak. What you consider important may not be automatically backed up.

Storing it off site through the internet also means that you can access the data from elsewhere and very worst case, should a major disaster (fire, flood etc) happen at your office people can all access their work remotely. Which reminds me, do you have a disaster recovery plan?

Hope some of that makes sense.