Hello everyone! In my last post, I talked about making a hard drive backup locally, which means backing your files up on something you have physical access on, such as an external hard drive or a secondary hard drive. Today, I will be talking about online backup and its advantages & disadvantages compared to a local backup.
Online backup (which also goes by the name cloud backup) is a service provided by many companies nowadays, which allows you to copy your files over to their servers in order to backup your files. But why would you pay for online backup when you can simply backup your files on your own?
Let's see the advantages of making an online backup.
1) Online backup provides a 256-bit encryption, which means noone can touch your files unless they use the encryption key for your files, and you should be the only one who has the encryption key.
2) You have online access to your files anytime and anywhere. If you need to use your files in a regular basis, instead of carrying an external hard drive around, you can simply access your files via the file server whenever you want to.
3) The data is usually compressed when you backup your files to an online servers, which means they will be less in size overall. That saves you from buying more backup space, and also allows you to download your files in a faster fashion.
4) After the initial backup, the online backup method is actually faster than local backup unless you own an expensive software, since many companies use a method where only the changes in a file is uploaded to the server rather than the whole file itself every time. So if you have a file of 100MB, and you increased it to 120, only the 20MB part will be copied to the server, saving you time.
5) Scared of your electricity going off or something? You can choose to have real-time backup, which sure drains your computer's resources more than a scheduled backup, but this way, your files will be copied to the server as soon as you have made a change to them, preventing you from losing anything at all.
Of course, with all the good things we listed, there are some disadvantages to online backup.
1) Since the only way you can restore your data is over the internet, if you are in a situation where your download speed is slow, you have bandwidth issues, or you have issues connecting to internet in general, then there's no way you can access your backup at that particular time. (Some companies offer to send you a disk with your backup in it.)
2) If you lose your encryption password, your files are gone forever. There's no way that you will access your files without your encryption password, except if your backup company provides managed backup. In that case, losing the password shouldn't be a problem.
3) If you have too many files you have to copy, and a slow upload line, then it will take you limitless amounts of time to back your files up. So, if you are planning to store terrabytes of files on a cloud server, maybe you should think about going back to local backup.
4) There's always the risk of the company being in a downtime, which means you might not be able to access your files in a critical time of need.
In my opinion, if you have a good internet line with high upload/download speeds, then the advantages of online backup outweigh the disadvantages of it. In the disadvantages I've listed above, the biggest one would be the upload or the download process taking too long because of a slow internet line.
All in all, I would prefer online backup compared to local backup any day of the year, especially because of the fact that I can reach my files anywhere I want, and I'm sure this is the biggest advantage of this method for anyone. Real-time backup is also another good feature, especially for someone like me who experiences lots of power outages.
I hope you enjoyed the read!
Online backup (which also goes by the name cloud backup) is a service provided by many companies nowadays, which allows you to copy your files over to their servers in order to backup your files. But why would you pay for online backup when you can simply backup your files on your own?
Let's see the advantages of making an online backup.
1) Online backup provides a 256-bit encryption, which means noone can touch your files unless they use the encryption key for your files, and you should be the only one who has the encryption key.
2) You have online access to your files anytime and anywhere. If you need to use your files in a regular basis, instead of carrying an external hard drive around, you can simply access your files via the file server whenever you want to.
3) The data is usually compressed when you backup your files to an online servers, which means they will be less in size overall. That saves you from buying more backup space, and also allows you to download your files in a faster fashion.
4) After the initial backup, the online backup method is actually faster than local backup unless you own an expensive software, since many companies use a method where only the changes in a file is uploaded to the server rather than the whole file itself every time. So if you have a file of 100MB, and you increased it to 120, only the 20MB part will be copied to the server, saving you time.
5) Scared of your electricity going off or something? You can choose to have real-time backup, which sure drains your computer's resources more than a scheduled backup, but this way, your files will be copied to the server as soon as you have made a change to them, preventing you from losing anything at all.
Of course, with all the good things we listed, there are some disadvantages to online backup.
1) Since the only way you can restore your data is over the internet, if you are in a situation where your download speed is slow, you have bandwidth issues, or you have issues connecting to internet in general, then there's no way you can access your backup at that particular time. (Some companies offer to send you a disk with your backup in it.)
2) If you lose your encryption password, your files are gone forever. There's no way that you will access your files without your encryption password, except if your backup company provides managed backup. In that case, losing the password shouldn't be a problem.
3) If you have too many files you have to copy, and a slow upload line, then it will take you limitless amounts of time to back your files up. So, if you are planning to store terrabytes of files on a cloud server, maybe you should think about going back to local backup.
4) There's always the risk of the company being in a downtime, which means you might not be able to access your files in a critical time of need.
In my opinion, if you have a good internet line with high upload/download speeds, then the advantages of online backup outweigh the disadvantages of it. In the disadvantages I've listed above, the biggest one would be the upload or the download process taking too long because of a slow internet line.
All in all, I would prefer online backup compared to local backup any day of the year, especially because of the fact that I can reach my files anywhere I want, and I'm sure this is the biggest advantage of this method for anyone. Real-time backup is also another good feature, especially for someone like me who experiences lots of power outages.
I hope you enjoyed the read!
