Online storage solutions

[Scottish Business Owner]

Just read the article below regarding Microsoft's move into the online storage market. There is also rumours that Google will launch a similar version called G Drive very soon.

http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/182122.html

Whats peoples views of online storage? Would you use it or do you feel you will be putting your data at risk?

 

[stugster]

It's not the most secure approach, but it's fantastic for every-day usage by a home user where the data being stored isn't top secret!

www.mozy.com is an online backup utility that automatically uploads your data as and when you change it.

2GB absolutely free, with the option of upgrading if you wish to.

www.mozy.com for the site

https://mozy.com/landing/pro_comparison is the comparison of all three mozy products

 

[Former Member 1]

Personally I wouldn't see a use for it. I would never consider entrusting business data to some 'etherial' spot out in cyberspace. And Microsoft are about the last people I'd trust with any sort of data. But then a BIG part of my job is managing data properly.

But for personal users Stu makes a good point here; I don't know how often I've heard some student say they've 'lost' their entire music collection.... Or more usually their latest essay and it wasn't backed up.. Either that or it's done and they can't access it because it's at home.

There have of course been solutions to these sorts of issue in place for many years. But an easy to use 'front end' could have potential for many users; a bit like a 'safe deposit' box . Of course people have to be persuaded/educated to use the facility...

 

[Foo]

Yeah I agree that people need to be educated about back-up and online storage.

But haven't you all seen the BT advert where you get a online backup service with your broadband. This TV Advert is informing people that this is possible and as it was for free, more people will start using it as a safe guard.

It is actually quiet amazing how many computers I have had to either install a new hard-drive and operating system because of faults or viruses. But because my client hasn't backed up their files they loose everything. So I find myself informing people about why they need to back up there files and settings allot.

 

[Former Member 1]

Last year I was teaching the HN Interactive Multimedia Creation course. We had at least seven or eight instances of students losing an entire semester's work because they only had one copy on a portable hard drive!

The worst of it was these guys were actually doing a a unit that involved a project in which they were to design a data management strategy for a small media company! If only they'd actually DONE what they wrote in their essays!

 

[CCConsultants]

Online storage can be the ideal solution, even for medium sized businesses.

Some offer encryption and compression, with the ability to only transmit sections of files that have changed (so a database is only uploaded once, and only changes sent up thereafter).

Some of the services are very powerful, and track all files, transmitting them as they change (e.g. Carbonite),others run on a timed basis and trawl a whole series of chosen files to find changes / new ones. You gets what you pays for to some extent, some are industrial strength, providing replicated servers et al. Others (like Jungle Disk, based on Amazon's S3 which also supports encryption) offer very low costs but still very capable software.

I back up over 20GB of business-critical data and photographs, updating my online store hourly, but my costs are far from high at under a tenner a month.

As internet speeds improve and server storage gets cheaper, the arguments for off-site backups, managed by a third party but all data being encrypted are getting more compelling.