One of the great privileges that come with the “virtual office” lifestyle is the ability to travel whenever and wherever you want. One day you could be in Thailand, and the next you’re in Costa Rica. And your employers don’t care where you are, because you do all of your work over the Internet. Life is good. But with this privilege, also comes risk. Carrying a laptop makes you a prime target for theft. And, because laptops tend to get thrown around a lot, they also stand a greater risk of damage than a desktop PC would.

That’s why, in this article, we’ll give you some basic telecommuter-specific advice for picking an online backup solution that will help protect the data on your laptop while you travel.

Look for point-in-time file recovery features

When most people think of online backup, they imagine simply sending their files away to some far-off server on the Internet. But there’s a bit more to online backup than just off-site file storage.

If you accidentally write over an important file or get a computer virus, you need a sort of “digital time machine” that will allow you to roll back to a previous version of your data. This way, you can recover your file from the way it was this morning, or yesterday, or even a week ago.

This is why it’s so important to pick a solution that maintains several file versions into the past.

Keep your “data loss window” to a minimum

Regardless of which method you choose for data protection, there will always be a small risk of data loss. The trick is to select a method that keeps that risk down to a bare minimum.

If you perform your backups every day after work, you potential window for data loss would be roughly 24 hours. If anything should go wrong at 4:30pm, you would lose an entire day’s worth of work. Not good!

One way to minimize this risk would be to select an online backup service that uploads your data continuously… every time you save a file. By doing this, you risk losing only a few minutes of work in the event that something bad should happen. This is much less painful than losing an entire day.

Pick a solution that protects you both online and offline

One of the biggest concerns that we hear from telecommuters and travelling businesspeople is that they don’t always have convenient access to a reliable Internet connection. Although this might’ve been a problem 5 or 6 years ago, online backup has changed a lot in recent years to accommodate business travelers.

Today, there are solutions available which – in addition to storing your data online – will also create a local hard drive partition for your backups. This way, you can still backup and restore your data when you’re off-line.

And as soon as you connect, these systems will instantly synchronize with the backup server. It all happens in the background, without having to lift a finger. (Easy is good)

Pick a solution that can minimize your bandwidth usage

Internet connection speed is a major concern when it comes to backing up data for business travelers. That’s why you should look for a solution that offers “block-level” incremental file uploads. With block-level upload technology, the backup software will analyze all of your files to see what has changed since your last update, and it will only upload that portion of the file.

This technique is so effective that it can often reduce your bandwidth usage by up to 90%.

Pick a solution that’s easy to use

This is the most important feature. There’s no point in having a backup solution if you’re not going to use it.

Any service you select should be very intuitive and user-friendly, and they should offer fast, friendly support if you have any questions.

If you’re a telecommuter who works from the road or abroad, these 5 features should be a good starting point in selecting an online backup provider that’s right for your needs

About The Author

Storagepipe offers online backup and backup software that’s designed for small businesses and telecommuters.

As the size of hard drive is double in every two years , computers users and business storing huge amount of data in their computers , laptops and storage devices. what if data storage device is crashed or stolen ? To handle these type of situation online data storage becomes very handy and cost effective. There are many online data storage services available and it is not possible for me to write about these services in a single post so i am starting series of online data storage services.

According to wikipedia

A remote, online, or managed backup service is a service that provides users with an online system for backing up and storing computer files. Online backup providers are companies that provide this type of service.

Online backup systems are typically built around a client software program that runs on a schedule, typically once a day. This program collects, compresses, encrypts, and transfers the data to the remote backup service provider’s servers. Other types of product are also available in the market, such as remote continuous data protection (CDP).

eSnips provides 5 GB of free online storage. Here you can not store files but you can also share Your thoughts,Files and documents,Pictures and photos, Video, Music and voice, Entire folders ,Snippets from the web ,Entire web pages ,Links And even create your own voice & video content online.eSnips allows you to create folders to organize files and helps to decide which folder to keep private, which to share with a select group, and which to publish and share with the world. eSnips is not just for storing file online but it also allows you to promote your business by setting up marketplace at esnips.com. 

The eSnips Uploader is the quickest way to upload files, record and publish audio and video, and save web snippets and pages. The Uploader also includes a Toolbar you can use in a bunch of cool ways.

Mozy offers 2 GB of free data storage. If you need more space to store then you can go for MozyPro option ,in that you get unlimited storage. One interesting Mozy offer is Automatic or scheduled backup, just tell MozyPro when to perform your backups. Automatic is the simplest method in which backups are performed while your computer is not in use. Scheduled backups can be performed daily or weekly at a specified time of day. All files are encrypted before sending to backup servers and can not be copied or  downloaded by unauthorized users.

Image Source  : blogsolute

Taking backup is very good practice but it can’t always protect your data. Think about thieves stole your backup drives, fire or flood or tsunami that can completely destroy your valuable data. The better choice is go for online data backup services. Online data backup services encrypt your data before sending to the remote server. Online data backup services can start processing and uploading files automatically on a schedule or in the background when there are enough free cycles available. Online data backup services are inexpensive and they won’t slow down your computer as well as your Internet browsing experience (after the initial large file uploads).

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