Cloud Backups

With much of our lives existing digitally these days, it has become more important than ever to keep a backup of your computer’s files. But what is a cloud backup, why is it important to have one, and why is it better than manually backing up your files to a USB or external drive?

 

What is a cloud backup?

Simply put, a cloud backup is an online copy of your files which you can access or restore from in the case that your local files are in some way damaged or lost. Whilst a cloud backup can simply act as an online copy, good backup services will come with additional features.

 

Why should I have a cloud backup?

So why is it a good idea to have an online backup? If your computer’s hard drive is in some way damaged, recovering the data from it is usually a costly and stressful endeavour that can have limited success. Having a backup copy of your files can help you avoid the cost and uncertainty as you simply restore your data.

Another more insidious threat to your data is ransomware. Hackers are getting smarter in the way they extort money from you and one of the methods that is growing in popularity is ransomware. Simply put, if a ransomware program is run on your computer it could encrypt all of your files making them inaccessible before demanding a large payment to decrypt them again. A much cheaper solution would be to restore the files from a backup instead.

 

Why the cloud?

External hard drives have been available for many years so why pay for a cloud backup subscription when you could make the backups yourself? Well in addition to having expandable or even unlimited storage, cloud backup services tend to come with many useful features. Firstly, an automatic backup schedule will mean your backup will be as recent and as relevant as possible with no effort on the user’s part. Another benefit is having file version histories. This allows you to restore a file from various versions and dates in the case you make changes to them that you want to revert or if a file had corrupted.

 

Food for Thought

How important are the files on your computer? How would you cope with losing your family photos or financial files? Having a data backup is essential if you have precious or valuable files on your computer. A cloud backup offers security and control with automatic backups and smart restore functions that a 1-to-1 manual solution cannot.