Has backup moved past removable media?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 12 May 2008 12:34

Opinion and Analysis

Backing up protects you against accidental deletion, or the failure of your primary hard drive. But what about fire and theft?

If your computer is stolen, do you think the thief will leave the hard drive sitting next to it? If your house burns down, will you grab you collection of external disks as you flee? Or will you be more concerned about getting your family and pets out of the building?

It seems to me that there's a lot to be said for posting a DVD of your recent photos to a trusted friend or family member after every major event.

Online services also have a part to play in the overall backup picture, but unless your ISP delivers high upload speeds and doesn't meter uploads, they aren't really viable for bulky data such as your digital photo album or email database. But it's a different matter for more compact items such as a small business's accounting records or the novel you're writing.

So I can't really see a place for the REV, as it is already undercut by conventional external drives.

The real problem is getting people to back up in the first place, and I suspect that things like Apple's Time Machine software and Time Capsule network backup appliances are setting the direction for home users. But businesses - even the smallest - may consider quick recovery from failure is essential. In that case, the combination of a more conventional backup strategy and a nightly cloning might be the way to go.