Effective Data Protection With Online Backup Software

By Author: Dan Reynolds
Total Articles: 1
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People often neglect data backup until something bad happens and information is lost. For households, this can be catastrophic as PC hard drives are bulging with digital pictures, music libraries, and personal finance files. Companies have gone out of business after the loss of customer information and accounts receivable/payable data.

Yet in the face of this sobering fact, it's widely estimated that more than half of the PCs in homes and small business remain unprotected by regular backups. PC hard drives, though generally reliable, contain many moving parts spinning at up to 10,000rpm, which means eventually they are going to wear out and break.

Online Storage & Online Backup Software

The big hard drive in "the cloud" is fast becoming popular as it stores your information over the Internet/Intranet on a server "offsite" so a fire, flood, theft, or other disaster won't affect the backed up information.

One such online backup software is Proxure's KeepVaultâ„¢, (http://www.keepvault.com) which automatically and in real-time protects data ...
... once a few simple options are set. KeepVault utilizes both online and local backups to keep the important stuff protected and available. In the event of a catastrophe, you can get everything back.

Unlike provider such as Carbonite, Mozy that sell you online storage limited to a single computer, the KeepVault online backup software can be installed on as many Windows PCs or Windows Home Servers in your home or office and the storage can be shared by all the computers in your network; perfect for homes and businesses with more than one computer.

KeepVault online backup software is available for XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Home Server, and Windows Server 2003/8.

Check out KeepVault - http://www.keepvault.com

Backup Strategies for Home Networks

Now that you're armed with some learning on storage technologies and the power of Proxure's KeepVault backup software, let's blueprint a real-world backup scenario for protecting a home network with 3 computers sharing a single Internet connection via a wireless router. In this particular home network, the family is sharing an iTunes library located on "Dad's" computer, along with the family's financial information. "Mom's" computer, however, has several thousand digital pictures from family vacations and events. The "Kid's" computer has many videos that have been downloaded as well as pictures from his cell phone. In this scenario, a basic KeepVault setup with 40GB of online storage is more than sufficient for the family's needs. The KeepVault software is downloaded and installed on all 3 PC's, and the shared online storage account can be configured to backup the contents of the 3 computers every Friday at 12am, when the computers are not in use, or it can be set for continuous, real time backup. Additionally, on "Dad's" PC, the financial information is backed up locally on a USB flash drive to have access to the backup quickly in case of a hard drive crash.

Another home scenario that could come into play is if there is a Windows Home Server (WHS) installed in the home. In this case, depending on how much content is being stored on the WHS, the 40GB basic online storage account might not be enough if there are lots of video content, which is no problem as the WHS version of the KeepVault software's online storage account can be easily expanded. Note that the WHS version of KeepVault protects the contents of a single Windows Home Server. Users connected to the server should have accounts on the server to store important files/folders that they want backed up.

Tip: It helps to keep your content organized. People have a tendency to lump all their digital pictures into the My Pictures folder without organizing them in a way they can easily find them. For some good tips and tricks to keeping all your digital content organized, check out the book Organize Your Digital Life by Aimee Baldridge.

Backup Strategies for Small/Medium Business

Certainly business owners know the importance of keeping their data backed up. A hard drive crash on the PC running the accounting software could be catastrophic to the business if it's not backed up. The business owner could find themselves in the position of not knowing who owes them money, or who they owe money to.

A professional version of KeepVault can back up critical information on each PC to a shared, scalable online storage account starting at 40GB of online capacity with NO bandwidth throttling. Enable KeepVault's encryption option for local backups so that in the event a drive is lost or compromised, the data will be gibberish without the password. Consider backing up locally to a NAS server with RAID implemented. The size of NAS server required will depend on how much data is needed to be backed up. Two or four drive NAS servers are most likely perfect as you can expect between 1TB and 5TB of capacity with very high transfer rates. Implement RAID 1 with a two drive NAS, or RAID 5 with a four (or higher) drive NAS as this gives maximum data redundancy.

Check out KeepVault - http://www.keepvault.com