Backing Up Your Data in the Cloud

Before talking about the Cloud, let’s have a look at some interesting facts about our habits of taking backups (Rubicon research – Sept 2008).

• 26% of the computer user population never take backups of their data
• A quarter of the population use only CDs and DVDs for backing up their data
• 28% of population use hard drives for backups, while 15% use USB flash drives.

The findings of the research suggest that majority of the computer user population still prefers to use the old school methods of taking backups.

The Cloud computing is the new kid on the Internet services block that has left people mesmerized. Cloud offers many IT services catering to individual computer users as well as, large organizations. In ‘Backing up in the Cloud’ model, your data is simply stored in one or more places connected to the Cloud and you have 24x7 accessibility to your backup data from anywhere in the world.

Backing up in the Cloud targets a unique segment of computer users; the users who do not backup at all! Thanks to some cloud services such as online photo albums, the segment of people who do not use backups are being automatically directed to use Cloud backup services, nowadays. Take Flickr as an example. Although Flickr is a photo sharing site, it also backs up your photos. This is a smart technique used by the Cloud backup services providers in order to get people use their services in multi faceted aspects for a variety of uses.

The model of Cloud backup has many differences in comparison to the conventional peer-to-peer online backup methodologies. First of all, you can choose many client tools for backing up your data rather than using proprietary tools. Next, you will never know where your data is physically located, and since you are connected to the Cloud, the location doesn’t matter at all. Finally, the Cloud is cheap. It allows any capacity less than 2GB of storage for free!

Online Backup Services - Is it for You?

Have you ever lost your data for some reason? In case if you ever have; then you should be one of the first people to consider using online backup services. A hard disk failure of a primary computer or backup computer or a scratch on the optical media is just a couple of reasons that make you lose data.

There is no restriction for anyone to use online backup services. But depending on your computer usage, type of data, and the size of data, you can choose the plan that suits you best. WorldBackups online backup services offer different online backup plans considering many user behaviors, so the various categories of people wanting to use online backup services can be served at once.

If you are a home user or a student with a lot of media storage or documents, but do not require backup size of more than a couple of gigabytes, you have plenty of options to select from. There are many online backup service providers who provide the basic functionality of online backup for free or for a low cost. But the issue is that, such services will not give you the restore facility that will restore your entire computer like WorldBackups does. In addition, the backup process can be slow, since such free users are not given any priority over business users.

If you are a business user having a few dozens of gigabytes of data to be backed up while expecting high rate of business continuity, you will benefit from a professional online backup plan. Professional online backup plans usually have extra functionality compared to free plans and larger storage and faster backup and restore processes. Although many online backup service providers offer professional online backup plans, only a few, including WorldBackups offer restoring capability to subscribers.