Welcome to the modern era where our life is filled with unlimited files, photos, videos and data. Computer or laptop couldn’t afford the massive amount data of ours anymore, invention of various storage system are introduced to our daily life. Most traditional users backup their data to physical means such as external drives, while techies even have home or business NAS setups, which are essentially external storage drives accessible on your private network. This acts as the central point of users backup but also the central point of failure. This means that if their drive is damaged, stolen, or fails then so has their backup. The problem here is that while it is a nice measure for backing up local data, it is not off site or failure proof. This is where cloud backups come into play.
Cloud storage stores your data off site making it much more secure & reliable in the event when you need to restore any data. Our precious memories such as photos, videos, documents and so on are all vulnerable unless we implement such a solution. Luckily nowadays most cloud services support not just local backup off files but external backup as well. Why create a backup of a backup you ask? Simply to reduce the redundancy you have. The more backups you have across multiple solutions, the safer your data is. Hardware failure may take months or even years but it is something that will occur and can take your data easily with it. When it comes to data backup it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Hard drives used to the standard. Before internet was widely available and online storage was a thing, everyone kept backup via hardware and other media such as CDs, Tapes, USB drives and the list goes on. However, nowadays with the advances in technology and hardware, off site storage is on the rise. The idea that you can store your data in the cloud safely and securely, more importantly affordably becomes a reality. Using cloud storage is often more convenient, economical and practical.
Of course this doesn’t mean physical media is obsolete you can still of course keep “local” backups with hardware but considering adding a cloud option on top of that is never a bad idea. In the event those drives are damaged, your data still exists in the cloud.
Nowadays almost all services offer backup of local drives and external media. Services like JustCloud, Carbonite, CrashPlan are all backup solutions that allows backup across all media. Not only that but at a very affordable unlimited rates allowing you to backup tons of data for under $10 a month in most cases. This saves you a ton of money while eliminating the worry of physical drives failing and you losing all your data.
Not only do you get peace of mind but a ton of benefits. By adding online backup to your external media your data becomes accessible across all devices and platforms. Cloud storage provides not just one access point but anywhere you have internet. Other features like file sharing, versioning, and recovery options are all extra features that most service providers include.
In a nutshell, whatever your use case may be, whether it is personal or professional, it is to your benefit that you take your local backups and external drives and invest in a service that supports cloud backup for all hardware. It is always the best decision to take your vulnerable data and store it off site and out of mind, knowing it is safe, secure, restorable and affordable.
