Yikes! Everything In My Computer Has Disappeared
PC Backup Service Comparisons
by Kathy Sparks, Online Business Manager

Okay, so you've heard it all before, "be sure to back up your system," and it is very low on your priority list – sound familiar? There are a million things you need to do before learning how to back up your computer system and actually doing it, right?

Believe me, that low priority status is going to come back to haunt you. I will give you two personal examples. As an IT manager, I, of course, was responsible for doing backups. The backup system was rather manual and the small company couldn't see spending more money on more computer services and equipment. I waded through the manual backups of all the PCs in the company each week. It required setting up a tape (this was a few years back), setting up the backup for each individual PC and then waiting for it to complete. I then repeated the process with the next PC on the network. I tried doing this once a week. One fateful week went by when it did not get done. Do you know how much a design engineer can do in two weeks? And then the big crash came. This guy had lost two weeks of work and I was not his best friend. Needless to say, the company sprung for a more automated system.

The second example is a little more recent and closer to my current practice which you might be able to identify with a little better. Going along, doing my work, needing to zip up a folder with many files in it – simple task. The problem is that I zipped my "working" folder up and moved it to another location. Discovering that I needed to change some of the files to be zipped, I deleted the whole folder so I could re-zip the correct files. Yep, that was everything in my working folder and everything was gone. Luckily, I reached behind me and pulled out my backup – you would not believe how many hours it would have taken to recreate that working folder.

So the lesson is learned. You can depend on your adherence to a schedule and make it a habit to back up your stuff routinely to CD, or you can choose an online backup service. I've recently compared four of the available services.

@Backup at www.atbackup.com

1. Free 30 day trial
2. An Explorer-like interface
3. You don't have to remember to do a backup
4. Data is encrypted and accessible with a password
5. You can restore files anytime
6. You have access to your files from any PC
7. 50 MB of data for the year is only $49.95 ($4.25/month)
8. Free technical support
9. You can backup and restore as much as you want
10. Google Page Rating of 6/10

On all backup systems, you download software to your computer, set up the time you want your stuff to be backed up and it's done. Of course, you have to remember to leave your computer on.

Xdrive at www.xdrive.com

1. Free 15 day trial (I always love free trails)
2. Pretty much the same service as above
3. Includes sharing files and workgroup capabilities
4. 5GB for $10/month or 10GB for $19.90/month
5. Google Page Rating of 5/10

I had a difficult time getting to their price page, which doesn’t impress me, but finally found that there are only two prices which are listed above.

The advantage of Xdrive is the file sharing where you can give permissions to other people in your workgroup to use the files. If you are looking just for backups, I'd not use this option.

EZbackup at www.ezbackup.com

1. Free 15 day trial
2. $9.95/ month for 250 MB and increases as the need for storage space increases
3. Won PCMagazine's "Editor's Choice" for online backup
4. They actually tell us that their backups are assigned to a mirrored pair of data centers that are geographically separate
5. They have a great FAQs section
6. You can order a CD of your backup
7. Google Page Rating of 2/10

IBackup at www.ibackup.com

1. 5GB $9.95/ month and the price goes up for the Economy Plans
2. WorkGroup Plans are also available here
3. The Economy Plans include backups and file sharing and maintenance.
4. Again, if you are looking for a pure and simple backup, this plan is too complicated with too many options.
5. Google Page Rating of 7/10

If I were going to subscribe to a simple backup system tonight, I'd choose the @backup option simply because I can try it for 30 days, it is simple to set up and use and it doesn't offer a lot of bells and whistles that I don't need at a reasonable price. If it turns out that I don't like it, I'll cancel the subscription and try another. The beauty of free trials.