Online Backup Options for Macs
Today, more and more people are acknowledging the need for an offsite backup, in the event of fire, theft, or natural disaster. Online backup has emerged as a potential solution that allows you to access your files from anywhere you can get online. Apple’s iCloud service allows you to backup iPhone/iPad application data plus certain iTunes files but isn’t a complete backup solution.
Customers tell us they’ve had good experiences using CrashPlan, which offers unlimited backup storage space for all your home computers at around $120 per year (Windows & Linux as well). Dropbox is another popular choice offering 2 GB of online storage space for free and more for a monthly fee. You can access your stored files through any web browser or through the Dropbox application.
Remember that backing up over an Internet connection is much slower than transferring files to an external hard drive. 100 GB of data could take a month to backup online, but after the initial backup, updates are much faster. If you have a lot of large files or a slow Internet connection, an external hard drive will make a better primary backup. It’s also much faster to restore your entire system from an external hard drive than downloading all your files from the Internet. Once you do get all your files uploaded, you’ll have an updating off-site backup that you can access around the world.
Published November 30, 2010 2:56 PM
Last modified on November 25, 2011 12:53 PM
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