Internet Backup 101 - Two Minutes To What You Need To Know

What is an Internet Backup and why should you be using it?

Although one might say that an Internet Backup is something that Google does when they index the contents of websites throughout the planet every day, that’s not typically what the term Internet Backup generally means in popular terms.

An Internet Backup, most of the time, refers to a method by which individuals and small business owners, use the services and assets of several companies with which to make a remote copy of some or all of their digital data stored on their computers. At its most basic form, it uses software that is installed on the computer to be backed up, connected to the Internet by some type of high-speed connection (Cable or DSL usually), and data is sent to the remote backup companies servers and storage systems for safekeeping, and retrieval when needed again.

In practice, most individuals and small business owners already have some methods to create and manage local backups. It’s often the last thing that someone remembers to do, and it may consist of writing certain files to any number of types of storage media.

So how does the Internet Backup work today?

The short explanation is that once you select the Internet Backup provider, based on your needs, you will install a small program that is offered by the vendor onto whatever computers you are going to backup with the service. This program will manage your backups and you will be able to customize your backup to suit your needs. Over a period of time, which could be hours, days, or weeks, your data will be backed up to the Internet Backup companies’ remote site.

Once your initial backup is complete, the only data that will usually be sent to their servers is whatever data that has changed on your computer. This makes subsequent backups faster and they take place anytime files are updated, often without your knowledge or any action required by you.

The programs will often have a control panel of some type, to let you know how much you have backed up and the status of the backup, and any other information that is of value.

When you need to restore your data, you should be able to select which files or directories that you wish to recover, and they will be transmitted back down to your computer, or another computer if desired. You should also be able to change the recovery directory if desired.

The amount of time required to upload your initial and subsequent backups is relative to the amount of data you are backing up, your bandwidth speed and availability to the Internet, and how busy your computer is.

Encryption is strongly recommended, whether you encrypt your data before sending it off (preferred) or whether you allow the Internet Backup provider to encrypt your data.