Needless to say, you get to pay for a drive of adequate capacity as well as overnight shipping. You restore your data, and then in most cases the drive is yours to keep as a new backup drive. If you really need all of your data as soon as possible, most online backup services provide overnight shipping of a disk drive with everything on it. For example, most of the services allow you to “pick and choose” the data that’s most critical for you so that it can be downloaded to your replacement computer immediately, then “trickle down” the remainder of the backup as needed. What happens if you need a quick restore of your data after a disaster? It depends on what data and how fast you need it. They are able to connect that drive to a local machine, then send the data into their storage system at a much faster rate than over the ‘net. Once a full backup is stored online, the software keeps an eye on changes that are made on the Mac and then sends the changes to the online copy. Some services provide a way to “pre-load” your data by sending them a drive with a recent backup on it. With a lot of data on your Mac, that can take a long time - sometimes weeks or even months. The software usually takes a while to upload an initial copy of your Mac’s data to the data center, as you don’t want it to overwhelm your limited internet bandwidth. That’s important, as you don’t want anyone to be able to have a look at your personal or business data while it’s in transit to the data center or while it’s stored in some massive data warehouse. In most cases, the software encrypts your data before sending it off to the data center. Online backup services consist of two pieces: software that runs on your Mac and a data center (or multiple locations) where your data is stored.

What if a fire or other disaster destroyed your computer and the backup drive? Wouldn’t it be comforting to know that your data still resides somewhere and can be recovered? Now, why would you want to store a copy of all of your data offsite when you have a big drive or RAID array backing it all up in your home or office? Physical security is the answer. Today we’re going to take a look at online backup services, which can be a valuable piece of the backup puzzle. March 31 may have been World Backup Day, but here at The Rocket Yard we put a lot of emphasis on the importance of backups throughout the month of April.

Best cloud backup for mac 2016