If anyone watched the Showtime television series Homeland on Sunday, February 20, you would have seen the main character, Carrie Mathison, facing a dilemma when she was locked out of her computer and unable to access vital information. Unlocking the computer was a crucial plot line, but as I watched I couldn’t help but think her problem might have been easily solved, if the data on her hard drive had been backed up to an external drive or the “cloud.”
A brief note about the cloud computing, which I have written about in previous columns: The word “cloud” in cloud computing comes from fluffy cloud images used by computer scientist to symbolize the internet in diagrams. All of our devices connect to the internet, and through the internet they can connect to remote computers with the capacity to store our data and send it back to us as needed. We call this “storing information in the cloud.”
In order to store your computer files in the cloud, you must subscribe to one of the many cloud backup services available, all of which work with both Windows and Mac operating systems. Some of the most popular services are Backblaze, Carbonite, Amazon Drive, iDrive, Google Drive, the web addresses of which are listed at the end of today’s column. All of these services offer several pricing plans, based on the amount of cloud storage included and the number of devices you can use with one account. Some services offer a limited amount of storage for free — Google Drive users receive 15 GB of free storage, the most of any service.
As Amazon Prime subscribers, Eddie and I are currently using Amazon Drive to backup our computers (we both use Apple’s iCloud for our mobile devices). Amazon offers unlimited photo storage to Prime subscribers and 5 GB for files and videos. An additional 100 GB of storage costs $11.99 a year and 1 TB (terabyte) costs $59.99 a year.
Once you subscribe to a service the backup process begins by downloading an application to your computer, and then selecting the folders you want to back up. Most services feature automatic, hands-free backups which work either on a fixed schedule — for example at the same time everyday or every week – or continuously as soon as changes are made to the selected folders. You can also choose to manually back up your files, but for this method you need to be vigilant in remembering to back up.
Once files are uploaded they are encrypted for security, and only you can access the online data with a password. First time backups usually take a long time, but subsequent backups are relatively fast, as only files that have changed will be uploaded. If your internal computer hard drive fails, or you buy a new computer, it is an easy process to retrieve your data from the cloud.
In addition to cloud backups, it is good practice to backup your data to a removable drive. Once very pricey, portable hard drives have become very affordable, with 2 TB drives selling for under $100. Most such drives come with backup software that works much like the cloud backup solutions and all Apple computers come with a built-in backup application, Time Machine, which creates hourly backups to an external drive.
Specialized software is also available for both Windows and Mac computers to “clone” your internal computer drive and make an exact, bootable copy for use in an emergency. If your hard drive fails, a bootable clone can be connected to the computer and bring it back to life. For reviews of cloning software visit windowsreport.com/clone-windows-10 for Windows computers and thesweetsetup.com/apps/best-app-for-bootable-backups Mac OS.
Make backing up your computer data a priority. When disaster strikes you’ll be glad you did.
Backblaze - www.backblaze.com
Carbonite - www.carbonite.com
Amazon Drive - amazon.com/clouddrive
iDrive - www.idrive.com
Google Drive - www.google.com/drive/
PC Magazine 2018 review of Cloud Backup Services - www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp
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