Computers
– they have become an important role in our lives. Let it be for
socializing or for working, they plays a big role in connect us
together. When talking about computers, its all have to do with data.
Nowadays, more and more data are available for us. Since we don't
need all the data, we would just save the ones that we use often or
important to us. That's why, we need backup because we don't know
when something will happen and we would lose our precious data when
it happens.
Making
backup in hard drives such as external hard disk, thumb drive,
compact disk (CD) or digital versatile disk (DVD) is a way to prevent
that disastrous moment to happen. If we think carefully, all things
have their pro and con so we cannot be to dependent on one backup
plan. Things like flood, fire, theft or stormy rain might ruin our
backup plan. This is where online backup tools come in handy.
Online
backup tools give us an alternative to make backup of all the data
that's important to us. Additionally, some of them give us the
ability to access and store our data anywhere, any time –
worldwide, as long as we have access to internet connection. To name
few that are commonly used by internet users are Dropbox, Google
Drive, Mozy, CrashPlan and LiveDrive.
Dropbox
After you've installed Dropbox in your computer, you
can start synchronizing your documents and data with your Dropbox
account for free. The free account gives user 2GB of storage and can
be expand up to 18GB by referring people (500MB per referral). By
going Pro, user can store data from 100GB up to 500GB and the fee for
the plans starts from $9.99 per month.
If you're a business team and would like to share
business documents, business plan is what suited for you. The plan
start with $795 per year for 5 users and with each additional user
you'll have to add $125 per year. The plan offers you 1TB of storage
for 5 users (200GB per user) and every new user comes with additional
200GB of storage. But if you need more storage than they offer you,
you can contact them and they'll try to give you extra storage space.
Google
Drive
As the name implies, Google Drive is the online backup
tools developed by Google Inc. The tool provide a free service of 5GB
of storage. If you're happy with the service provide and wish to
upgrade your storage capacity, you can do that with $2.50 per month
for 25GB of storage and up to $799.99 per month of 16TB of storage.
The capacity pricing mention is for personal usage. But there's more!
If you've upgraded your account, then you can share the data stored
with other users. Plus, you can work on documents at the same time
with the other user. I would say that this is very convenient for
users who are far apart but needed to work on a same document at the
same time!
That's not all with Google Drive. Any changes you've
made in your stored documents will be save and you can check it back.
You can revise back as far as 30 days and which ever revision you
wish to save forever, you can.
Mozy
Another comparable online backup tool is Mozy.
Currently for Mozy, it offers two different plans to choose from.
First is the MozyHome, have the service for personal usage and the
most basic plan. It provides scheduled backups, which gives you the
opportunity to set your time when to make the backups. The software
is suitable for Windows OS and Mac OS. Also, if you're a user of a
smartphone (Iphone or Android) then you can download its mobile
application so that you can access your data on the go.
The other plan is MozyPro, build for businessmen and
businesswomen. It have extra services just for the entrepreneurs that
doesn't come with the MozyHome plan. Of course the pricing for both
plans is different. MozyHome plan starts with $5.99 per month with
50GB of storage size for one computer usage. For three computers, the
amount of storage given is 125GB with the price tag of $9.99 per
month. Additionally, you can add computer for $2 per month and add
storage size of 20GB for $2 per month.
On the other hand for MozyPro, the pricing start as low
as $2 per month per computer (if there's 5 computers) for 10GB of
storage. Mozy provided offer up until 1TB of storage with $76 per
month per computer (applicable with 5 computers).
CrashPlan
As the name stated, this is truly one of the online
backup tools. Comes with plans such as CrashPlan, CrashPlan+,
CrashPlan Pro and CrashPlan Proe, it will provide the backup service
that you need. CrashPlan plan is a free trial version. It is so that
you can familiarise with the system before upgrading to CrashPlan+
plan or even higher.
CrashPlan+ have 10GB personal usage, unlimited personal
usage and unlimited family usage. Though, of course all three come
with different price tag. The 10GB have $1.50 per month with quota of
10GB. The unlimited personal usage comes as low as $3 per month.
Meanwhile, the unlimited family usage comes as low as $6 and can be
use with 2 to 10 different computers.
Though
CrashPlan provide its services for businessmen too but to buy the
service, one have contact its admin at international@crashplan.com
to find reseller in one area.
LiveDrive
LiveDrive is suitable for home, business or reseller
cause it provided services for all three of the category. For home
usage, there's Backup plan, Briefcase plan and ProSuite plan. The
pricing for home usage starts as low as $7.95 per month to $15.95 per
month and $24.95 per month. The storage provided for these plan are
none (Backup plan), 2TB (Briefcase plan) and 5TB (ProSuite plan).
This storage size is for storing data and not the backup capacity.
But in case you wanted to add extra storage capacity, you can by
adding $7.95 per month per TB.
Meanwhile, business plan have Express and Standard
plans. Express plan is $49.95 per month for 3 user with 2TB
(combined) storage space, while Standard plan is $159.95 per month
for 10 user with 10TB (combined) storage space. Additional service
for Standard plan is one can add user for $14.95 per month and add
storage space for $7.95 per month for each TB added. Also, Standard
plan gives the users to brand the website and sharing portal with
personal logo.
If you're planning to make this is business or as side
income, LiveDrive gives you the opportunity to do so by sign up with
them and pay $59.95 per month with one month contract. After signing
up and pay, you can start be a reseller and sell unlimited amount of
LiveDrive backup tools.
