The idea behind this service, is to make sure that if the worst happens and your computer is physically damaged, stolen, or if it crashes and the data on it is unrecoverable for some reason, you won’t lose all your precious files because you’ll have backed them up to a location outside of your computer. The system costs £30 to buy, but Bullguard offer everyone a free 14 day trial.

There are a number of system requirements for using the software as there is with almost all software. You’ll need to have, either, Windows 7, Vista, XP or Windows 2000 running on your computer in order to use the software, and you’ll need 20MB of free space on your hard drive. You will also need a broadband internet connection, and if you are planning on using the online storage space for online backups then this will need to be a good strong connection so that data can be transferred safely and easily.

The (Bullguard Backup Service is very easy to use, when you first start your trial or use your purchased product for the first time, you are provided with a simple step by step online back up wizard that will talk you through the whole process, and once you’ve gone through it once and set everything up, online backups can be scheduled to run automatically, something Bullguard call ‘set and forget’.

When the files are being transferred onto the online storage space, they are encrypted to assure your privacy, and they remain encrypted all the while they are stored online. Once they have been backed up online however, they are then always accessible to you through secure online access.

Bullguard backup service is fully able to back up e-mail as well as all your regular files, and is fully integrated for use with Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail. This means that all the e-mails that you choose to keep, can be backed up regularly making sure that you never lose important information or people’s contact details.

Bullguard run a free 24 hour 7 days a week customer support set up, so that if at any time you have a problem, there will be help and support available to you.

Which Magazine awarded Bullguard Internet Security 9.0 their best buys status, saying ‘Bullguard’s comprehensive, easy-to-use security package is backed by an excellent online support package and is well deserving of its Best Buys status.’

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1. Looking for a NAS with built-in online backup NAS (Networks Attached Storage) drives have been around for quite...

Why can’t Iomega install Mozy (which is also owned by EMC) on the NAS drives they sell? I know there are some hacks to make backups from a NAS to Amazon’s S3, but I would much rather make use of the space I have at Mozy.

*rant over* Oh, and I would love suggestions in the comments for a NAS which can do automatic independent online backups!

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Within Small and Medium Businesses (up to 150 employees) data loss is in most cases (64 percent) caused by a computer crash. Other causes are employees (accidentally) damaging the data (21 percent), power outages (16 percent) and theft, fire or other kinds of physical damage (20 percent). Most companies (66 percent) only take measures when the harm has already been done. Losing data means losing productivity which can cost between 1000 and 25000 dollars a day, depending on the size of the company and the severity of the data loss.

Of the companies that do make backups only a few store data on a daily basis. External hard disks and CD-ROMs are the most popular backup media.

The lack of discipline in making backups could be caused by the love-hate relationships SMB’s have with ICT. Most SMB’s still find it difficult to pinpoint where and how automation can be translated into concrete benefits. While ICT has become an integral part doing business, especially older entrepreneurs are lacking essential ICT knowledge.

Unlike with traditional backup technologies such as backup tapes, nowadays there should be no reason not to make daily backups of important data. Using an online backup provider, off-site backups are made daily without any user intervention and in case of data-loss the backed up files can be easily restored.

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Solid State Drive

Solid-state drives (SSD) are computer drives that do not contain any moving parts. A solid-state drive is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. A SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, which means that you can easily replace your old hard disk drive in most systems.

Even though Solid State Disk drives have made steady progress in gaining popularity over the last year, there are still many people who are not yet convinced of the superiority of SSD technology over the regular disk based hard drives.

There have been a number of persistent rumors and misconceptions about SSD drives which I shall address in this post.

The energy savings of SSD drives are not that big in real life usage.

Fact:
It is obvious that having to use an internal motor to rotate the disks of a regular hard disk costs more energy than powering the chips in an SSD drive. SSD drives do not have any moving parts and therefore the potential power savings can be huge. Unfortunately the chips in an SSD drive are constantly ‘on’ and using power. Modern hard disk drives stop rotating when they are not in use and in that state use very little power. Still, thanks to the fact that operating systems are being optimized for SSD drives recent tests have proven that SSD drives have far superior energy consumption over regular hard disk drives and can easily improve laptop battery life to as much as 30 minutes.

SSD’s have a shorter lifespan than regular hard disk drives

Fact:
The impression of a short lifespan is probably caused by the shock that SSD drives do deteriorate over time. Some people might have had the hope that the chips in the drives would not suffer from any wear and would never break. Still, in practice SSD’s have a much longer lifespan and are much more reliable because of the absence of any moving parts. If for example a laptop with a regular hard disk falls on the floor, chances are quite big that the disk will not survive.
When a chip in an SSD drive comes to the end of it life, it will be switched off and the data will be moved to another chip in the SSD disk. The controller software will keep you informed of the health status of your SSD drive. If a regular disk drive fails, it will mean a complete loss of all data on that disk.

Interestingly, the bigger the SSD drive capacity, the longer it will last. This is because the disk controller makes sure that all chips are used evenly, SSD disks now easily outlast the lifespan of the computers they are used in.

SSD drives are actually not that fast.

Fact:
Questions about the speed of SSD’s have arisen after some poor benchmark results of cheap netbooks. A lot of netbooks are equipped with small SSD drives but unfortunately they do not always perform better than the hard disk versions. The Acer One is an example of a netbook with a very slow SSD and based on the poor test results of the speed of the SSD in this particular machine some people have drawn the incorrect conclusion that all SSD drives are slow. As with regular disk drives, there are fast and slow versions (what a surprise!). To cut costs, netbook manufacturers often use inferior SSD drives that both have a very small capacity and are relatively slow. Adding to that, netbooks are often using Windows XP which is not at all optimized for getting maximum performance out of SSD technology.
The latest Intel SSD drives use Multi-Level Cell NAND chips and offer a staggering performance of 250MB/s sustained read rate and 70MB/s sustained write rate. These drives completely blow away any regular disk drive when it comes to speed.

SSD drives have very small storage capacity.

Fact:
Thanks to storage in the cloud (photo’s at flickr, video streaming from Netflix etc.) most users do not need huge amounts of disk storage and even though currently SSD storage is still quite expensive and does not offer the capacity of regular hard disk drives, SSD disks are rapidly becoming bigger and cheaper. 128Gb SSD drives are quickly becoming mainstream and Sun is already offering a 576 Terrabyte storage system based on SSD technology! While this system is still pretty expensive, it definitely offers lots of storage capacity.

As you can see, resistance to SSD technology is futile Are you planning to buy an SSD drive for your computer?

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Thumbs up for Online Backup

But most people have not yet discovered the convenience of online backups, and for those people I have decided to create a list some of the most important advantages of online backup.

• With online backup you always have a backup, whatever happens. Every day your backup is created automatically and immediately stored safely outside your home and/or business. Even after fire or burglary, you can easily get your data back with the click of a button.
• Online backup runs quietly in the background so you do not have to worry about it but it can also provides you with extensive statistics if required. After each backup you can request a comprehensive report about the backup job. You can determine at which moment of the day the backup is made, so your productivity is not affected.
• Even though you will have to pay a small fee for your online backup subscription, using online backup brings considerable cost savings since you do not have the cost of tape streamers, tapes, backup software and servers and the time you need to backup and verify. In this time of higher energy bills you can also count on a considerable saving on your energy costs since you do not need a dedicated backup server running 24/7. All these benefits account for an average saving of at least 60%.
• The backup is always ready for restore. You can restore your data at any time and at any location with a simple press of a button retrieval. Some online backup providers can even deliver your backed up data by carrier so you don’t have to wait for your backed-up data to be downloaded over the internet.
• Your data is automatically encrypted before it is sent over the secure Internet connection. The data remains stored encrypted. This is your data only for you to read.
• Making your backups online gives you peace of mind. You will no longer have to worry about backing up your data and the safety of your backup media. As your online backup provider will take care of this.

To be fair, I have to mention that as with most things in life next to all these advantages there are also downsides. The most important issue with making your backups online is the complete dependency on a broadband connection. Making the first full backup can sometimes take days, and while download speeds are usually higher than upload speeds it can still take a considerable amount of time to download your backup.

You will also have to make sure you set a very strong password on your account as the weakest link in the security chain is always the user.

What are your experiences with online backups? Can you think of any more pros and cons?

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Files in a Box

Last month I received a new yearly hosting invoice and although it was not very expensive, I thought it was a waste not to do anything with FileinaBox.com. Especially considering that from the Webalizer stats it appears that quite a lot of visitors come to see whether they can buy my domain name!

I have therefore decided to start creating content for this website. I have installed WordPress and started creating content relating to file backup.

This website serves the following purposes:

• Earn money from backup-related affiliate programs (I will probably not put any adSense banners up because I don’t like the way they look and it gives visitors the -correct- impression that this website is only for making money).
• Create a well-ranked website that can serve as a platform to launch other websites from, and possibly attract potential buyers for the domain and website.
• Possibly launch my own backup related service from this domain. After all it is a great name for an online file storage service or something similar.

To get things going I have defined three tasks; setting up the technical side on my hosting package, writing good backup related content and start promoting the website to increase traffic and domain rankings.

Technical
I have installed WordPress, while this is actually a system built for blogs I have found it to be an excellent all-round content management system.
After installing WordPress I set up the link structure and installed some useful plugins. And finally I have optimized the default blog template (note to self: rename the default template if you are going to customize it as it gets overwritten when you update WordPress!).

Content
Because I already own a backup related weblog on which I have written quite a lot of posts about backup, writing the content for the blog is not a big problem for me. I have started translating the most popular articles and I already have some ideas about completely new posts such as a comparison of online backup providers and a guide for synchronizing your files across various computers.

Promotion
To start traffic flowing to my website I have submitted the url to various social bookmarking and user generated content sites such as Digg, Magnolia, Delicious and Yahoo Buzz. I have also created a lens on Squidoo and added the link to the Startpagina portals I maintain.
The problem with most social bookmarking sites and blogs is that they add rel=nofollow to the links you post there, which means that it does not help for the ranking of your website. Forums are a much better place to post links to and I am planning to write some backup guides that I can put on some forums.

Target
It is now the beginning of November 2008 and this website has not yet been indexed by any of the major search engines. The traffic mainly consists of people who are interested in buying this domain name.
My aim is to have 25 daily visitors on the first of Januari 2009. This should then grow to more than 100 daily unique visitors in April 2009.
From the moment the site gets more than 100 uniques per day I shall start putting ads on.

My goals for File in a Box in summary

• After an initial startup phase with more frequent posts, reach a posting frequency of one good post per week
• Optimizing for file backup and synchronization
• 25 uniques on 01-01-09
• 100 uniques on 01-04-09

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File loss leads to despair!

This according to research among 400 representatives of SME companies in the Digi-conscious Program, a collaboration of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and industry.

The State Secretary of Economic Affairs and the director of eNederland have launched a campaign to create awareness amongst Small and Medium Enterprises to deal with digital security.
76 percent of those surveyed believe that their security is good to very good. Yet in 82 percent of the companies no formal agreements are made on, for example, safe working and what workers may do online.

Training of employees in the confidential and secure management of data in the business is done in less than one quarter of the companies. Most companies rely blindly on the good will and personal understanding of their employees. Twenty percent also has no back-up policy. Without a back-up important data on company computers are forever lost in case of a disk crash or other form of data loss.

Almost one quarter of the surveyed companies has experienced digital incidents. These contain primarily the theft of a laptop or PC (56 percent), a virus infection (54 percent), a defect in the infrastructure (31 percent) or a spyware infection (30 percent). It emerged at 60 percent of the victims incur significant damage.
It is notable that most incidents occur more frequently in companies that show it to be aware of security.

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The online backup software performs regular and automatic backups of your files to avoid the loss of important information in the course of theft or loss of your computer, virus attacks, hard disk failures and other calamities.

Online Backup Diagram

For home and small business computer users, online backup services may be too expensive if the intent is to totally back up a hard drive on a frequent basis. This problem can be overcome by backing up only the most critical or often-changed files online, and using physical offsite backup methods for less important or infrequently changed files. For medium-sized and large enterprises or for particularly valuable data, the cost of online backup can prove to be a wise investment.

In a database, an online backup, more often called a hot backup or dynamic backup, is a backup performed on data even though it is actively accessible to users and may currently be in a state of being updated. Online backups can provide a perfect solution in multi-user systems because they do not require any downtime, as does a normal offline backup.

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Your input on the articles on File in a Box is highly appreciated, below every article you can find a comments form where you can provide feedback and ask questions.

Now go ahead and start reading our What is Online Backup article!

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