Playing Devil’s Advocate For On-site Backup
When it comes to comparing on-site data backup versus using an online backup service, there really is no comparison. Indeed, by using an online backup service you are definitely making the right choice to protect your data from both physical hardware failure and viruses. However, for just a moment, I would like to play “devil’s advocate” if you would, in order to make sure that there is, indeed, nothing that I, in my ultimate reverence toward online data backup, have missed as far as any potential advantages that may exist to backing up on-site.
Obviously, the biggest advantage to on-site backup is the fact that you can transfer data so much faster over a network or USB cord than you can over the internet. In fact, I’ll come right out and say it; for many this fact makes it so that they want to stay in the Stone Age and keep backing up all their stuff to external drives. However, I have found a hole in this supposed “advantage”. After all; when you first buy into an online backup service you, admittedly, will probably have to spend a little time (usually no more than a week or so) backing up all your materials to the online backup service’s server. However, once this is done, all that is usually backed up when using any decent online backup company is the files on your computer that are either new or have been altered, which doesn’t end up taking any time at all!
