Immersion Technology Inc.

As more business information is stored on computers, it is extremely important that this data is being backed up. We continue to hear stories from non-profits, businesses and individuals about how they lost everything due to a hard drive crash. More often, we suffer from accidentally deleting a file or writing over it. Like the insurance policies we have on our cars, businesses and homes, it is comforting to know there is a way to recover from information loss.

You need to protect the data in your computer from physical issues like dropping, lightning, flooding, or excesive heat. Even expensive solutions like RAID (two or more hard drives configured to provide more than one copy of data), on-site tape backup, and surge supressors won't protect you from the damage of a fire or natural disasters. There are solutions to securely archive your documents and data online. A number of companies now provide ways to archive important data online automatically.

Like most applications there are consumer and professional versions of these backup solutions.  The consumer versions work well as a simple means to backup devices like laptops and home computers.  The professional versions provide managed backup all computers, laptops, and servers in your office from a central control panel.  Recovering a file is often as easy is going into an archive drive on your computer and pulling out an old version of a file.  Many services even allow you to remotely access your documents so you can restore them to another computer and view them anywhere in the world. 

The main downside to these online backup services is you need to have a broadband connection to the Internet.  Depending on your upload speed and the number of documents you have stored it could take hours or even a day to backup everything.  My suggestion is to install a backup solution as one of the first steps of setting up a new PC.  It is just as important as anti-virus and firewall utilities.  You also benefit from a quick initial backup before your computer gets filled with documents. 

The major providers of this service are: Carobonite, Mozy, iBackup, and eVault.  Immersion Technology Inc. recommends is Mozy since it provides a free service for home use (2GB of space), supports both PC and Mac computers, and the professional version allows you to manage backup for your entire office from a single web interface.  If you are interested in getting help setting up any of these services give us a call at 866-439-4951 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .