There are many ways to efficiently backup your hard drive and make sure that your data is safe and that should anything go wrong with your computer you will be able to easily and quickly restore all your data or indeed any single part of your data.

The first choice you will need to make is whether to hard drive backup online or onto another storage medium of your own.

A hard drive backup online simply means that you send your data via the internet to a company that looks after your data for you on their servers on their premises somewhere in the world. The huge advantage of this system is that your data is very safe. Usually the organisation looking after your data will have procedures in place to ensure that there is very very little chance of your data becoming corrupted or indeed being destroyed. They will probably be looking after data for many thousands of people and will either own or rent computer disk space in secure and safe data centres. These data centres are quite often built specifically to store many servers. The security and safety features of these buildings are second to none.

There will be full blown security in and around the building. No one will be able to enter the building without permission. Certainly no person will be able to gain access to the area containing the servers unless they are well known or properly identified. In addition, no access to the computers themselves will be given to anyone other than those with appropriate security clearances and full password knowledge. There will also be an audit trail so full information about any access will be logged and saved. These data centres will probably also have a sophisticated system of CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) so that all entries and exits will be recorded and monitored. Obviously this level of security is not available or accessible to the home user or small business – indeed even larger businesses would struggle to set up such a complex arrangement.

An online hard drive backup will obviously require an internet connection. Although it is possible to use a slow internet connection nowadays it really does not make sense to do so. If you decide to use an online hard drive backup service it would make sense to use a good Broadband internet connection. These are always on and fast. There are many connections nowadays that do not have a restriction on the amount of data that you upload or download. Once you become a member of an online backup service you will be given the facility to set up an automated procedure using their software that will automatically upload your data at an appointed time to their servers on a regular basis.