You may be thinking whether it really is cost effective to spend you money on a non-tangible service like online backup. This may be particularly true if you’ve never bought a downloadable software, or ever bought an mp3 online. But truth is the digital word is where it’s at, and as internet speeds get more secure and fast we’re likely to be relying on digital products and cloud computing even more.

So do you spend 5 bucks a month on online backup or do you spend $300 buying a USB drive? And how long will a USB drive last.. 1 maybe 2 years? Any longer?

Online backup isn’t just a backup service in the traditional sense of the word, it’s also an excellent file management power tool that can save you time from doing all the mundane tasks on your behalf.

Firstly before you backup it’s important to do a bit of spring cleaning, go through your computer and uninstall the the bloated software you never use, clean out your temporary files and internet cache and most importantly delete all the unwanted files, files that you never use, and just accumulated over the years.

Here’s the thing, if you have to think about it, it probably needs to go. Freeing up these data frees up space on your hard drive and also allows your hard drive to perform better as it has more space to manoeuvre.

After all that just select which files you want to rescue and set the backup software to upload the said files.

What makes online backup services are particularly attractive is the fact that, they’re much more convenient to use, and you don’t have to worry about carrying bloated thumb drives or DVD drives which are prone to degrading and scratching.

So are online backup as cost effective and affordable as they make out?

As you may have guessed from what I was alluding to earlier, online backup is actually pretty cost effective, it’s possible to get a basic services which will give you 50-100mb of online storage space for around $5 per month. Consider the fact that over the course of a year or two you’re likely to be done with a USB storage drive, over time the drive will degraded in performance and may get knocked around and eventually be rendered obsolete. It actually works out to be pretty cheap to run and online backup service as opposite to relying on local portable storage.

Secondly, the problem with storing data on a thumb drive is that they’re far more difficult to manage, where do you store you data? how do you manage multiple versions of files? What happens if you lose your files and the data is unencrypted? The problems are endless, and believe me nothing is worse than have an important power-point presentation stored on a USB drive and then losing it hours before the actual presentation. With online backup files are automatically transmitted onto a secure location, and archived. Not USB drives, no problems!

The issue to consider though is, how fast is your internet, and what sort of uploading/downloading activity are you anticipating. This will be an issue for you in ascertaining whether online backup is a viable option for you. If you have a slow internet connection and have moderately sized files to backup, this may take a long time to upload, making it quicker and easier to just use a flash drive for instance.

Tags: advice, guide, online backup

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