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		Bits and Bytes December 2, 2008 By: Gregory M. Peiguss Remote Backup, what is it and how does it work?  Well many of you have probably heard a new buzz term floating over the radio, TV, e-mails and the Internet and its called Remote Backup or Remote Storage.  With all of your valuable data being stored on your hard drive it’s becoming more and more critical to have that information backed up, typically in another location.  By the data being in another location, it’s safe from fire, flood, little “Johnny” randomly hitting the delete key on your important files or music that you’ve worked so hard to download, sync to your IPod, and listen to.  More importantly, if you work from home, as many of us do, you most likely have important business documents saved on the computer.  Just imagine what would happen if those documents were suddenly all gone?  This may have happened to you already.  It’s important to know the technology behind storage and what your options are. Let’s first start out with your primary storage device.  By storage device, I mean the hard drive in your PC or notebook.  This is where all of your files are stored (i.e. operating system, programs, important files, music, movies…you get the idea).  This device, short of the fans or the CD/ROM drive in your computer, is the only device that has moving parts inside of it.  What happens to moving parts?  After a while they fail.  When that hard drive fails, all of the data that is magnetically placed on what are called “platters”, has the potential for being corrupted or erased forever.  Having that data backed up to another location in case that hard drive fails is one of the most important “favors” you can do for yourself.  There are many different options for remote backup, most can be purchased in retail electronics stores, others are services that can do the job for you. The most common form of remote backup would be one of many types of external media.  Different types of external media could be USB flash drives, CD or DVD disks, external hard drives, or the very aged and almost extinct floppy drive.  These types of media are fairly inexpensive and readily available at your local electronics store.   These media options enable you to “do it yourself” at a reasonable cost.  Another option that consumers and business are adopting is copying your information to a remote, secure location.  This is the best option for having secure, highly available and ready data in the event that your data has been wiped out on your local hard drive.  Remote, off-site, storage options are typically fee based depending on the amount of data that you want backed up.  The advantages of these services are that it’s always available, it’s in a secure location and it’s away from any internal or external variables.  Little “Johnny” can take the USB flash drive backup and dip it into his orange juice or use a CD-Rom backup as his personal Frisbee.  These files are copied over the internet, via a secure connection, to the remote server and are backed up on whatever schedule you desire.  All you really need is some sort of high-speed internet connection (cable, DSL, etc…). In a nutshell, get your data backed up, it’s imperative!  Too many times, I’ve seen people come to me with a fried hard drive and no backup.   It gets real expensive to pull that data off of a hard drive when it’s not working. If you have any questions regarding the technology discussed in this article, please feel free to look me up.  You can contact me via e-mail (g@219.com).  Or call ON-SITE Computer, (800) 866-3343, and ask for Greg.  I can help you with setting up your own backup or inquire about pricing for remote storage.