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| FAQ |
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There are many online data backup
vendors available on the internet. However, not all providers
were created equal.
Many offer robust, sophisticated backup tools suitable for protecting
vital business or personal data from disaster. Unfortunately,
there are also a large number of lower cost solutions where
important corners have been cut or features skipped in favor
of economy.
Before you trust an online backup service with your critical
personal data, it is important to understand what features are
available and how important these are to you. |
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| How secure is your data? |
| Does
your backup provider use encryption when they store your data? |
Even though most services use
encryption to protect your data as it traverses the Internet,
many do not use encryption when they store your data on their
servers. In fact some even state in their terms of service that
encrypting your data is not allowed. They are banking on the
fact that many people will store the same files, so they don’t
want to back up a file more than once. If someone else needs
that file, they could be giving them access to one of your files
instead.
This may be fine if you’re just saving MP3 music files,
but wouldn’t you prefer your personal information (like
banking records or emails) be kept secure?
With DataGuardian, each file is encrypted before it
leaves your PC. It travels the Internet this way and is stored on
our backup servers as a bunch of numbered files containing encrypted
data. Your encryption key is unique to you. Only you have the
ability to access your data. |
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| Is the software easy
to install? |
| Do
you need to hire an IT consultant to install and maintain your
backup software? |
Most online backup tools were
designed to be used by expert IT administrators. Many of these
services require intimate knowledge of Windows in order to make
a backup. For example, did you know that your Microsoft Outlook
email file is kept in a special hidden folder 6 levels deep
in your PC? If you don’t, you may have a lot of trouble
backing it up.
DataGuardian was designed from the start to be used by normal
everyday people. No special skills are required to back up your
PC. When you download and run software, it will automatically
figure out where things like your Outlook email, My Documents,
Desktop, and Favorites are located. From there you can easily
add or remove other folders if you wish. |
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| Does it store multiple
versions? |
| Does
your online backup service keep multiple versions of files? |
To keep storage costs down,
a lot of backup services keep only one copy of each file. This
may seem fine to you, but what would happen if some of your
critical files get corrupted by a virus and you do not notice
until after your next backup? Could it be that your online backup
provider is keeping perfectly preserved copies of your corrupted
files? This could be an issue when it comes time to recover.
DataGuardian keeps multiple versions of your files. If a file
gets corrupted, or if you just need an earlier version of a
file, you simply go online and download whichever version of
the file you need. |
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| Does it backup changes
or just whole files |
| Does
your backup tool backup the whole file every time it changes? |
Backup services without versioning
features need to back up the whole file each time it changes.
This is not so bad for smaller files like Word documents. But
backing up your whole mail file every time you get new mail
is unworkable. If your mail file is 500MB, it could take hours
to back up just that one file. If you get just one new email
message, will you have to start all over?
Some services deal with this issue by backing up only weekly
or at night. If disaster strikes, how much new email would you
lose since the last time your backup ran? Other services deal
with this by not backing up your email at all.
With DataGuardian, once you have a file backed up once, the
software will detect and extract only the data that changes
for backup. If you have a 500MB email file and get 2MB of new
mail, DDB only needs to back up the 2MB that changed. That backup
can happen in a matter of seconds. |
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| Is the rate plan excessively
complex? |
| Does
your backup service require you to buy more storage than you
need? Then what happens if you exceed your storage plan? |
Most online backup plans are
based on set "buckets" or storage. If you pay $10/month
you can perhaps store up to 1GB. When you try to back up 1.001GB,
the backup will fail and you will have to either delete some
data or upgrade your plan. To upgrade your storage plan, some
services even require you to download and reinstall new software.
Usually this happens just before a big disaster.
If you have more than one PC this gets even worse. You need
to figure out how much storage each PC needs and manage each
plan separately. Each time a PC fills up its plan, you will
have to go through this process again. |
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