The rage for computer backup seems to be online computer backup services.
Many factors including Internet speed have influenced this backup choice.
There is a lot of pitfalls that you'd really need to know about though, regarding online computer backup.
The trouble is that many of the Internet backup providers give you the impression that they are a one stop service.
One thing they normally don't tell you is that you're only backing up small subset of the files on your computer.
An example of this is when they only back up your my documents folder.
There is still a lot of data that is not being backed up with this type of service.
I have, for example, well over 300 gigabytes of data on my hard drive.
This includes video, audio and several documents.
That's not good enough, I want everything to be backed up properly.
Needless to say, using an online backup service could be a problem for me simply because it got too much to back up.
Even if I was to back everything up to one of these online services, it'd be brutal to recover it online.
Imagine if I had to restore or 300 GB of data.
I did a little bit calculating annotate probably about a week and a half to store everything.
I'm not saying that online computer backup services are bad thing, but you have to realize the limitations of these types of services.
Another thing you need to consider when looking at online computer backup services, is how secure your data actually is.
I would hate find out that my confidential information was being shared on the Internet.
I'm sure that this doesn't happen very often but whenever your daily use your computer and is on the Internet then that has to be in your mind.
If you have confidential documents I think that you should never use an online backup service.
I think the big point that one has to remember is that you really are only backing up in many cases only a section of your whole hard drive.
So what would you do if your hard drive crash? This isn't so far-fetched anymore.
As a computer technician I replace several hard drives every single month but it failed.
As a matter of fact I just replace the hard drive on my laptop that is only 15 months old.
Hard drives have gotten very inexpensive and also have gotten very unreliable in the process.
Now you have to also worry about all your programs, file settings, e-mail and whatever else didn't make it to the online backup service.
The majority the cost of repairing computer can be the programs, set up and so on.
I personally recommend all my customers to do two types of backup.
Certainly consider using a good online computer backup service.
They'll do a good job of backing up things that you're saving every day.
Also consider using a local backup to back up your whole hard drive..
This will include all your data, all of your programs and anything else that is important if you want to restore everything.
There really is no excuse as you can get a good backup program and an external backup drive for next to nothing.
An external hard drive in today's marketplace is normally less than $150.
If you're considering online computer backup consider also using the local backup as a good save your bacon.