{"id":243,"date":"2008-12-12T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T08:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=243"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:55:27","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:55:27","slug":"my-thoughts-on-online-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"My Thoughts on Online Backup"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a big fan of backing up computer files. I’ve got backup programs running automatically on all my computers, with robust external hard drives storing safety copies of my stuff. I use all the backup tricks in the world, save one: online backup<\/em>. My reason is that I don’t trust it.
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\nThanks to a fast Internet connection, it’s now possible to backup your computer to a hard drive elsewhere \u2014 an online storage and backup system or server. Such a process would have been laboriously slow in the olden days, but today it’s a piece of cake.<\/p>\n

The online backup works like this: You pay for a service that provides you with disk storage on the Internet. Then using backup software, either your normal backup program properly configured or customized stuff, your files are all copied to that computer “up” on the Internet.<\/p>\n

As you continue to use your computer, the changes in the your files are echoed to the backup copy on the Internet. That way you don’t need to worry about lengthy backup procedures or even have to remind yourself or the computer to backup. In fact, because the computer backs up as you use it, you don’t have to worry about keeping the system on all the time just to meet a 3:00 AM scheduled backup.<\/p>\n

Another advantage to online backup: fire protection! Though I regularly backup my computers, to be truly secure I should place all the backup drives into a fire safe. The disaster doesn’t even need to be a fire; it could be a tree falling on the house or even a burglar. With online backup, such things are not a concern because the safety copy of your files is elsewhere.<\/p>\n

It’s that “elsewhere” part that is my biggest reservation against using online backup. I am uncomfortable with having my data on some other hard drive. It’s not that I have files I don’t want anyone to see. It’s that technically there is only an employee’s ethics standing between him and my data. If he wants to peek, he can do it on a remote disk. Such peeking is not possible when the backup is on my external backup hard drive in my office.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m being a little whack here, but I’m just really uncomfortable with keeping my important files on a remote computer run by some company that might be bought or go bankrupt. In that case, who knows what would happen to my data? Nope, I’m a local backup guy until someone can really convince me otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a big fan of backing up computer files. I’ve got backup programs running automatically on all my computers, with robust external hard drives storing safety copies of my stuff. I use all the backup tricks in the world, save one: online backup<\/em>. My reason is that I don’t trust it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}