My Travels on the Net

I once had a boss who had so many piles of paper in his office that once a year, one of the three secretaries in the office would spend a couple of days in his office with him sorting through it all. The running gag was that we had to tie a rope around the unlucky secretary's waste so we could pull her out when she got buried under an avalanche of paper.

Fortunately, I’m much more organized than that so when I cleaned out my office last weekend, it only took about half a day. Once I had all my papers filed and put away, I had two file drawers. That’s it. Two.

That’s not necessarily a good thing. Why? Because it made me realize how much information I have stored on my computer. For years I didn’t worry too much about that because all the websites I’ve done and the related files are stored on servers out on the internet. Then I thought about the Word docs representing hundreds of hours of research I’ve done, the irreplaceable digital photos and the lifeblood of my day-to-day business: email. Wow. And I thought I was bummed when my wallet got stolen. At least with my wallet all I had to do was shut down credit and debit cards. If I lost all the stuff on my computer, my business would be seriously debilitated for several weeks if not months or years.

So why haven’t I done anything about this yet? I’ve looked into backing up my computer data but each time I did it quickly turned into a Pandora’s Box of technological questions I couldn’t answer and exorbitant expense. First of all, more than one computer guy has told me that “All you need to do is” and then describes a multi-step process completely outside the realm of probability. Secondly, when I first looked into online data backup in 2003, it cost about $100 a month. $1200 a year made that impractical backup process sound reasonable; but still, I didn’t do it.

So after I cleaned out my office, I researched “reviews of online back up systems” and came across a very helpful article on InformationWeek called “Review: Five Online Backup Services Keep Your Data Safe.” In the article, they describe five different online backup systems tested by someone who knows what they’re doing. I thought I was going to go for Carbonite but after reading about Mozy, I tried them out.

Carbonite might be perfectly good but I’m pretty happy with Mozy. Two things really stood out with Mozy. First, their phone support was excellent. I called twice about separate issues and each time I didn’t have to wait more than a minute to talk to someone who was very helpful and treated me like I was a sentient human being. Each time, they stayed on the line while I figured things out and even anticipated future issues and offered solutions to potential problems I might have. Second, I really like that the Mozy online back up system scanned my computer and created a suggested list of folders I would probably want to back up. I didn’t have to figure out what to back up; they did.

Beware: purchasing and setting up an online backup system is not the same as buying a book on Amazon. It’s definitely more involved but it’s not rocket science. If you’re fairly comfortable with buying things online, aren’t in a rush, and understand how folders work on your computer, you can do it. If you feel like an internet newbie, you might want to do this with a more tech savvy person handy so they can help you answer some questions and configure the set up process.

Ready to give online back up a try? Here are a couple of tips to help streamline the process:

• Be sure to check how big your folders are. When I purchased my plan, I thought 2 GB of space would be enough. Little did I realize that the folders I wanted to back up were closer to 16 GB! (Here’s how to check your folder size: Assuming you have a PC, right click on the folder, then click on Properties, and then select the General tab.)
• It’s certainly not a requirement but you also might want to clean up the files on your computer first. I didn’t realize that I had a bunch of music files I didn’t want that where taking up a bunch of space.
• Music files and pictures are WAY bigger files than your Word docs, spreadsheets or PDF files so if you’re looking to reduce files, clean those out first.
• Don’t forget to clean out your email! If you’re one of those people who pride yourself on keeping every email you ever received, get over it. There’s a good chance your Outlook file is going to be pretty big. My general rule of thumb is to delete emails older than a year unless they relate to financial stuff or important decisions made by clients.

Labels: Mozy, online backup system, saving computer data