Strategies for protecting critical data or precious memories have been around for years. The problem with these strategies is that they usually rely on humans to consistently do the right thing to protect this information -- and humans are not as reliable as a computer. Corporations and businesses alike have developed procedures to make backup copies of critical information.
Physically moving the backed up copy (usually a tape) off-site for safe storage most often involves a human. Personal users, on the other hand, rarely backup any information including large music collections, family photo albums and precious videos.
This is where ioSafe is different.
01One option to reduce human error is online backup. Companies such as Mozy from EMC or Carbonite offer online backup for relatively lost cost to consumers ($5-$25 per month). Cost for business class service can range from hundreds to thousands per month. These systems install a small amount of software on a computer and usually work during idle cycles of the computer. Looking for new and changed files to backup, the programs can encrypt and backup the data over the internet. Should you need to access copies of files due to a hard drive crash or accidental removal -- the online backup software provides an interface to recover some or all of the files saved at their location and moves the copy back to your computer.
02While the solution works great for smaller data files (less than 2 GB), problems arise when considering larger amounts of information (more than 50 GB). According to the CWA, as of August 2008, the average upload speed in the USA was 435 kbps (kilobits per second). Using the speed calculated by the Communication Workers of America, to upload a 1TB of data, it would take around 279 days. Assuming you have a T1 line speed of 1,500 kbps, it could take as long as 80 days. Of course, this is just for the initial uploading of all of the files -- and then just the new or changed amount of daily data needs to be uploaded. But according to some estimates, by 2013, the average household in the United States will have over 9TB of data stored. Currently our demand for electronic storage is far outpacing the rate of speed increase for network connections -- only making this problem worse in the future.
Backing up an entire server to enable bare metal server recovery is also problematic with an online solution. Not only will the speed of backup and recovery be relatively slow, the monthly cost of bandwidth and data storage might be prohibitive.
Along with backup, you must consider recovery. If your internet connection is severed, you've lost your ability to both backup and recover.
03An external drive with disaster protection can overcome many of the problems with online backup. Since the external drive is connected directly to a computer using a variety of network interfaces, transfer speeds are extremely fast. A user could configure the external drive as another disk drive, such as "d:", and then save their work directly onto the drive. Since the external drive has disaster protection -- the user would have real time protection against natural disasters, a major reason to copy the information to a remote location.
Of course, using the external drive with disaster protection alone does not prevent user errors, like deleting a file by accident. To overcome this, a second disk could be configured as the backup disk, and this one would also have disaster protection. Backup software can then copy changed files and protect them from user errors.
Lastly, once the external dive is purchased, there is no on-going monthly fee. Online backup solutions usually have an entry level package with a limited amount of space for a fixed monthly fee and then charge an additional monthly fee when you exceed the limits.
