Data is your most important computing asset. It is easy to lose and difficult to replace or recreate.

Our 15 day completely free trial of BackupMyStuff allows you to evaluate our software and test how it can backup and restore your critical data. Just select the Try It button above to begin.

The major causes of data loss on PC's are:

• Hardware failure, including damage by power surge and drive failure
• Human error, including accidental deletion
• Software file corruption
• Virus-infection
• Theft, especially laptop theft
• Hardware loss, including floods, fires, lightning, power failure

Although the causes of data loss may not be totally preventable, they are predictable and steps can be taken to reduce the chance that you will loose data. Obviously all computer users should have a current antivirus product installed and in most cases a firewall as well. The next most useful item to protect your data is some form of backup.

In a recent survey conducted by Gartner Research, 64% of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) said they backed up their data on-site, not off-site for disaster-recovery purposes. "That is a disaster waiting to happen," says Adam Couture, principal analyst at Gartner. "Anything that happens to their servers is also going to happen to their backups." (InfoStor, June 2004).

In the UK , the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry produced a report in May 2003 entitled “ DISASTER RECOVERY : BUSINESS TIPS FOR SURVIVAL”

The report contained the following statistics:

• 90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to shut within 2 years of disaster
• 80% of business without a well structured recovery plan are forced to shut within 12 months of a flood or fire
• 43% of companies experiencing disasters never recover

Why Backup Online?

In their 2004 review of online backup services PC Pro wrote..

“The general principle of backing up is to make it as simple as possible, and with minimum involvement for the user. The ideal backup system is set up once, and you never touch it again (unless you need to restore something from backup, or need to add another machine or hard disk to what you're backing up). And there are many good software packages that allow you to do this kind of backup, usually to a second hard disk, either fitted internally or connected externally using USB 2 or FireWire.

These backup methods have a lot going for them. External hard disks are cheap, and can be used with multiple machines if you buy one that's large enough. If you need more storage, you can simply replace the external disk with one that's even bigger, and use the old backup drive as extra storage.”

Backing up to a hard disk, Tape or CD/DVD has one major disadvantage: “it doesn't make you immune from complete disaster - and complete disaster isn't as rare as people tend to think. If a fire guts your house, you'll lose everything, as both computer and backup will be gone. If a burglar steals your computer, he'll also be likely to take anything attached to it, including your backup disk. And if a power surge fries your machine, it could also fry anything else attached to it. Of course, you could remove your drive every night and hide it somewhere safe, but remembering to do that, and remembering to put it back the next day, is an extra step that will ultimately prevent you from backing up every day.”

The ideal backup system is one which performs backups automatically, encrypts your data, and moves your data offsite (i.e. away from your computer) as soon as possible. BackupMyStuff does all of these it really is a simple ‘set it and forget it' backup solution.

Is Backing up online expensive?
Online Backups can be very cost effective. “Depending on the amount of data you want to store…you could get several years' worth of backup for the price of a hard drive and some backup software” (PC Pro August 2004). When you add in the amount of time traditional backups require to administer you can see that online backups save you TIME and MONEY.

Click on the ‘TRY IT' button below to get our backup software. This will give you a completely free 15 day trial of our software.