What is Online Backup?

The term online backup or online data backup typically refers to backup up data across the Internet to some remote machine. That's why the process is also sometimes called remote backup or remote online backup. The idea is that you have to be "online" to perform this particular kind of backup.

The Importance of Online Backup

Why does online backup matter? Every year in the United States, hundreds of people discover the value of online backup when their computers are destroyed by natural disaster. Floods, hurricanes, and even earthquakes that destroy your computer are likely to also destroy computers and backup data in the immediate vicinity. Part of the value of online backup is the idea of remoteness: if your backup data is physically hundreds of miles away, the odds that a natural disaster will wipe out both your data and your backup copies become very remote.

Online backup can also offer insurance against unnatural disaster. For example, as disk-to-disk backup becomes more popular, many small businesses and even home users are simply backing up their data to another computer on their local-area network. Unfortunately, a worm or virus that succeeds in compromising your computer has a fair chance of also compromising other computers on the same local network. Online backup, on the other hand, is generally performed via a very narrow and well-protected communications channel, making it very unlikely that the virus or worm that wipes out your computer will also be able to destroy your online backed-up data.

A side benefit of online backup is that online backup software is almost always configured to run automatically. Any time you make backups automatically rather than reliant on your memory and good computer hygiene, the likelihood of not having crucial data backed up when disaster strikes is decreased.

Free Online Backup

During the dot-com bubble, the idea that more and more people were always online (due to having DSL or cable modem connections) spawned a collection of companies offering some variation of free online backup services. Like the dot-com bubble, these companies largely imploded, either going out of business or drastically changing their business models.

These days, if you see someone selling free online backup, you'll want to squint at the fine print very hard before signing up. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to for insurance, but what's the point in paying less if the insurance company disappears the first time you make a claim. At a minimum, when you sign up with an online backup services company, you should plan on regularly testing your ability to restore data. The day disaster strikes is not the day you want to first get to know the restore procedures of your online data backup service!

For home and SOHO users, there is at least one form of "free" online backup worth considering. Most Internet service provider plans include some disk space that you can use for hosting websites or other purposes. If you have backup software that lets you perform selective backups and that has built-in support for FTP, it may be worth configuring the software to back your data up to your private website space provided by your ISP. If you have any confidential data in your backups, then you will also want the backup software to offer the ability to password encrypt the backed-up data.

See Also:

Hurricane Season Means Online Backups -- an article about using hurricane season to remind yourself to start or check up on your online backup plan.

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