Your physical security was compromised and your laptop or desktop are gone, but you’re not worried because your important data was encrypted, but now what? If you were backing up your data, you buy your new computer, restore your data and continue like nothing happened.

Backing up your data even on a desktop is essential and it’s one of those things everyone knows they should do, but no one does. People usually wish they would have backed after something happens. Because most humans are lazy, especially about backups, the best backup solutions have the least amount of human involvement. The best backup system is the one you will use, consistently and can restore your data easily.

Thumb Drives

Flash drives, also known as thumb drives or USB drives can be connected to your laptop in seconds. If your laptop has a built in card reader you can also use SD or Compact Flash memory as a drive.

For backing up to another hard drive or flash drives, I like Syncback from 2BrightSparks. There are several versions of Syncback, including a completely free version. For something that’s as important as your data, you need something reliable and easy to use. It’s extremely flexible and will allow you to backup to any kind of drive, including FTP (more on that later). You can choose to backup or synchronize directories on different computers like home and laptop. You can automate backups using Syncback with several different options, including any time a file is changed, it gets backed up.

If your backing up sensitive data to a removable drive, encrypt it with TrueCrypt in case you lose it.

While backing up to a removable drive is good, backing up “offsite” is even better. You can’t lose it and if something happens to your truck (or house) or you have to evacuate the truck or house in a hurry you can rest assured your data is current and safe.

Offsite Backup

There are several solutions for offsite backup, most cost something. Most are reasonable and easy to setup. Every time you’re online you’re able to backup your data. If you’re using WIFI or a slow connection, a complete backup of your entire drive may be unreasonable, but if you do your initial backup at home, you will only need to backup files that have changed while you’re on the road.

Sites like Carbonite make things simple and for unlimited storage at $50 a year, it’s not bad. It automates the backup process and works in the background while your computer is idle. There are several other online storage companies doing the same thing, but even companies like Xdrive with AOL can go out of business. Most of the time they give plenty of notice so you can find alternatives and retrieve your data.

Amazon S3

Amazon has a storage service called S3. It’s a little more complicated, but you only pay for what you use. There are utilities like Jungle Disk that create an easy to use interface for backing up and storing files. It also comes in Mac and Linux versions.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new startup, 2 gb free but you can upgrade to 50gb. Dropbox is available for Mac, Linux and Windows. Dropbox not only stores your files, it can sync files between computers with different operating systems as well. You can share a separate folder to the public.

If you happen to have a website you can use the space by transferring files to that server using a FTP client or Syncback’s FTP feature. I’m not sure I would buy shared hosting as storage because some of the hosts that advertise “unlimited” storage, it’s not really unlimited, but it’s possible.

Store More Online

You can also keep as much of your work online. Using sites like Flickr, Picasa or even Facebook for your photos will ensure your photos are always safe. Google Docs allows you to create/upload/download documents and spreadsheets online. Even Microsoft has begun an Office version of keeping your documents on the Internet.

Bottom Line

The bottom line here is automate and keep it safe. The less you have to think about doing it, the more it will get done. Some of these solutions take more time to setup than others, but it’s time well invested.

Our computers are now safe as they can be and our data is safe and secure. Next time, staying secure online.

Links:

• TrueCrypt
• Carbonite
• Amazon S3
• Jungle Disk
• Flickr
• Picasa
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Office Live
• Facebook
• Dropbox