One of the biggest IT challenges for small businesses is backing up their data easily and effectively. Everyone knows and understands the principle behind regular backups. But few put it in practice.
There are several reasons for this gap between theory and practice. First, few have the discipline to take regular backups. Second, the process itself is more of a chore. Third, it is easy to mess up the backup media rotation and most people do. Fourth, the data to be backed up is often scattered across several computers – the salesperson has contact information on his computer and the accountant has the accounting database on his. Backing up all the important data from all the machines can be time-consuming, not to mention boring. Fifth, few people store the backups off-site. If you factor in other stumbling blocks such as managing the backup rotation sets (if you don’t know what backup rotation sets are, you just proved my point!) and unreliable media, the backups of many small businesses are in a sorry state. Of course, there are alternatives, but they are almost always expensive. You could, for example, hire a person to do periodic backups or subscribe to a service that takes the backups off-site. But you have to shell out big bucks for the privilege.
An answer to some of these difficulties is online backups. They don’t need tape drives, optical drives, or media. They are off-site by definition. And they are easy to perform. You can back your files up simply by dragging and dropping files or by downloading an automatic backup agent that works in the background and continually backs up your files as they change.
On the down site, online backups are more expensive than the traditional methods. As your data grows, the costs can quickly climb. The premier services charge you an arm and a leg. To keep costs under control, you need to look at second-tier providers. The problem, though, is that the reasonably priced services are generally offered by rather unknown startups. As we learned the hard way during the dotcom bubble, startups can quickly go belly up. If your online backup provider goes out of business, your data might vanish overnight. This, perhaps, is the main reason small businesses eye online backups suspiciously.
If you have ever wished that you could do with a reliable, reasonably priced online backup service, your prayers may have been answered. AOL provides an excellent online backup service called Xdrive at a price tag you can’t refuse – FREE. That’s right. You can get an account with 5GB of storage at no charge. Of course, each user can get a separate account. As long as you don’t store videos, huge amounts of music, or photographs, 5GB is enough storage for business data. And the service is offered by AOL, which is unlikely to vanish overnight like start-ups. You can go and sign up for the service at http://www.xdrive.com.
You need an AOL screen name to sign up. If you don’t have a screen name, you can create one. After you log in, the first screen you see is a bit confusing. You would normally expect to see an interface to upload files. Instead, you see a welcome screen with some help text. You have to click the big green button that says “Click To Launch Xdrive”. That will open a browser window that will allow you to upload and download files. You can look around and explore the various choices like upload, download, and share.
The window will provide all the features that any file-upload-and-storage application provides. But the real beauty of Xdrive lies in its desktop client. You can download the application from a little green button on the welcome screen. When you install it on your computer, it will ask you to choose a drive letter – X: by default (and therefore the name Xdrive). When you launch the application and log in to your Xdrive account, your online storage folder appears as a drive in Windows Explorer. You can simply drag and drop files as if the drive were a local drive. To back up folders from different computers, simply log in to the account from each computer and copy the files.
If you can’t remember to drag and drop files, the desktop client allows you to choose files and folders for automatic back-up. When you make changes to the designated files or folders, they are backed up automatically according to the schedule you specify. You have a wide range of choices for your backups. You can keep multiple backup sets. All your backups are neatly organized by date and time in a folder called MyBackups. You have the choice of taking full or incremental backups. And if you are paranoid, you can choose to back up securely over SSL.
Xdrive has plenty of other bells and whistles. You can download files direct to Xdrive over the Internet and you can share files with anyone. (The person you share files with needs a Xdrive account.) Xdrive has built in features for photo galleries and music play lists. You can even store your web bookmarks and launch the sites direct from Xdrive. In fact, even the web client has the automatic backup feature although it is still in Beta.
Although the application is incredibly easy to use, you must keep in mind that dragging and dropping files onto your Xdrive still involves file transfers across the Internet. If you are transferring a huge file, it will take some time for the transfer to complete. A little pop-up window will show the progress of the transfer. Other than that, the application is unobtrusive. The second thing to remember is that other than online forums there is no support for nonpaying customers. (Has anyone ever needed support for a Gmail or a Hotmail account?) If 5GB per account is not enough for you, you can always buy more space. If you buy space, you are also eligible for traditional support. And yes, I forgot to mention that you don’t have to put up with any advertisements except for one spot on the welcome page!
I am often skeptical of free services. Xdrive is an exception. For a free service, Xdrive is feature-rich. I don’t think I have seen an easier way of backing up files.
Xdrive belongs to a new generation of online services that is making computing easier and affordable for individuals and small businesses. Give it a try. You might end up liking it as much as I do.
