Web backup to a data center of an online service provider becomes increasingly popular.
Just like with conventional backup to an external hard drive or to DVD-Rs, you need to have a basic understanding of how your backup is configured in order to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Particularly, you need to pay attention how incremental backups are done.
Luckily, it is not rocket science.
When you burn a copy to a DVD, it is a full backup.
Very straightforward, but not always practical.
What happens when the content of your files and folders changes -- you make changes to a document, or edit a digital photo? You need to burn a whole new DVD for that.
If your hard drive is several hundreds of gigabytes then keeping backup up to date becomes an impossible task.
With external storage, whether it is an external hard drive or a web backup, most backup software is smart enough to do incremental backups.
It does not touch the files that did not change, and overwrites obsolete files with a newer copy.
Here lies the problem.
Suppose you finish editing an important document.
As you try to save it, your word processor encounters an error and saves a corrupted version to disk.
Or you accidentally delete part of your document and overwrite a good version.
Both happened to me multiple times.
If you realize the error immediately, you can retrieve the good version of the file from your backup, and pat yourself on the back for being computer savvy and backing up your data.
So far so good.
Now, what if you only notice the problem when you open the document a week later? You try to get your backup version to no avail; your scheduled backup already ran and copied the new useless copy to your backup location, overwriting the one that you hoped to retrieve! This brings us to the main point of the article.
Incremental backups should be configured to keep multiple versions of your files, and it is critical that you verify that.
Most web backup services provide you with software that is robust enough to handle multiple file versions.
Read their documentation and check the software settings but do not stop there -- run your own test.
Pick a file that you change often and see how many versions of it you can retrieve.
If you backup to your own external drive then it is up to you to set it up right.
In any case, the old advice applies.
You should backup your critical data to more than one location.
Ideally, use web backup in combination with burning a DVD copy or copying to another hard drive or computer.
No single company can guarantee your data safety - you are the only person who is responsible for that.
Just like with conventional backup to an external hard drive or to DVD-Rs, you need to have a basic understanding of how your backup is configured in order to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Particularly, you need to pay attention how incremental backups are done.
Luckily, it is not rocket science.
When you burn a copy to a DVD, it is a full backup.
Very straightforward, but not always practical.
What happens when the content of your files and folders changes -- you make changes to a document, or edit a digital photo? You need to burn a whole new DVD for that.
If your hard drive is several hundreds of gigabytes then keeping backup up to date becomes an impossible task.
With external storage, whether it is an external hard drive or a web backup, most backup software is smart enough to do incremental backups.
It does not touch the files that did not change, and overwrites obsolete files with a newer copy.
Here lies the problem.
Suppose you finish editing an important document.
As you try to save it, your word processor encounters an error and saves a corrupted version to disk.
Or you accidentally delete part of your document and overwrite a good version.
Both happened to me multiple times.
If you realize the error immediately, you can retrieve the good version of the file from your backup, and pat yourself on the back for being computer savvy and backing up your data.
So far so good.
Now, what if you only notice the problem when you open the document a week later? You try to get your backup version to no avail; your scheduled backup already ran and copied the new useless copy to your backup location, overwriting the one that you hoped to retrieve! This brings us to the main point of the article.
Incremental backups should be configured to keep multiple versions of your files, and it is critical that you verify that.
Most web backup services provide you with software that is robust enough to handle multiple file versions.
Read their documentation and check the software settings but do not stop there -- run your own test.
Pick a file that you change often and see how many versions of it you can retrieve.
If you backup to your own external drive then it is up to you to set it up right.
In any case, the old advice applies.
You should backup your critical data to more than one location.
Ideally, use web backup in combination with burning a DVD copy or copying to another hard drive or computer.
No single company can guarantee your data safety - you are the only person who is responsible for that.
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