Backup Solutions for your Crashed Hard Drive

Imagine this: you’ve worked very hard to prepare a presentation for your boss and it’s going good. You have a cup of coffee at your side to keep you awake. Accidentally, you spill some of the hot drink on your laptop and the next thing you know is that ‘all is lost’. It will get you fuming, right? And you end up regretting the fact that, ‘why didn’t I backup my data?’

All wouldn’t have lost in vain if you had backed up your data in the first place.
In this age of technology, data management has become a necessity. Backing up data is undoubtedly an important task in all platforms, be it for smartphones, laptops/PCs or tablets. With data being so critical to our work, if we lack any contingency plan to backup data, we’re in for a really big disaster at some point in the future.

Luckily, we have a wide range of tools at our disposal, some are freeware and some are paid solutions.

AOEMI Backupper

AOEMI Backupper is free to use and has a very intuitive interface. It is very simple to use so that the user doesn’t have a hard time while backing up data. It provides the user the flexibility of backing up the whole, or backing up individual folders/files, disk and partition backups. The AOEMI Backupper has a very straightforward interface. Therefore, whether you have experience in backing up data or not, you will find AOEMI Backupper very easy. With a single click you can create an image of the folder or file that is going to be backed up so as to create a restore point for the future. Scheduled Backup is one of the many new features. It provides the user the feasibility of scheduling backups. You can also make a boot able USB drive with the help of AOEMI Backupper. It also provides you the ability to encrypt or compress your backup data.

 Backup Maker

This Windows only backup software offers extremely simple wizard-driven backup to a variety of local media and remote hosts. It also very easy to use and gives you flexibility to automate your scheduled backup. Within an instant, your valuable data is converted to a zip format and transferred to a hard drive, USB flash drive or directly to a CD/DVD. It also has a very easy guide to creating a scheduled backup. It also empowers you to either overwrite the current saved data as a whole or incrementally as the files are added, replaced or altered. Restoration is just as simple with point and click dumping of your data from the backup to the previous location. It also offers encryption up to 256bits (AES). It is a freeware.

www.backupmaker.com

 

OneDrive (Cloud Backup)

Now we come to the latest mode of backing up data, OneDrive. It provides us with the option of backing up data on the cloud. Formerly it’s name was SkyDrive. You can store any kind of file in the service, including photos, video, and documents, and then access them from any of your Windows PCs or mobile devices. The service organizes your files by type for you, so it’s easy to find what you need. OneDrive offers free storage of 7 GB with the added flexibility of gaining 3 GB extra space if you enable camera backup option on your smartphone or tablet application. Refer OneDrive to a friend and both of you will receive +500 MB (10 friend will give you up to 5 GB). The total space is now 15 GB, which is quite sufficient enough for HD videos, pictures and etc. The file size restriction is about 2 GB. Those who use Windows 8 and 8.1 have OneDrive built into their operating systems. However, anyone can download it from the web, may it be Android, iOS, Windows Phone or PC platforms. You also have the ability to synchronise data between all of the above mentioned platforms. Paid solutions start from 2$/month for 100 GB and 4$/month for 200 GB, apart from the free space size.

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/

 

Copy

A solution provided by one of the well-reknowned security network, Barracuda. Copy is another one among the many in the line of cloud storage. It allocates 15 GB of free space with the flexibility of backing up data between a number of platforms via your Windows PC, Mac OS X, Linux and the feasibility of syncing data across Android and iOS devices. For high security purposes, it also provides different layers of encryption which includes AES 256bit. Copy offers features like secure sharing, source validation and identity verification, which makes sure the content is only seen by the people you desire. Copy also gives a bang for your buck as its pricing is very competitive, although the file size limit is relatively low.

https://www.copy.com/home/

 

Dropbox

One of the earliest and the most popular cloud storage services around. It mostly praised for its elegant and clean design, but it also offers seamless integration on a number of platforms. You can store any kind of file in Dropbox, by either uploading to the Web site or adding it with the desktop apps. Those apps live in your file system so that you can easily move files from your computer to the cloud and vice versa by dragging and dropping them into your Dropbox folder. It’s easy to use interface and sharing features makes it stand out from its competitors. Dropbox gives its users plenty of opportunities to get extra storage up to 2 GB you to get when you sign up. If you participate in the quick Getting Started tutorial, you get 250 MB. Turn on the automatic photo upload feature on any of the mobile apps to get 3 GB of extra space (you can get only 3 GB total, not per device). You can earn 500 MB for each friend you refer to Dropbox who actually signs up for the service, up to 16 GB total, or 32 referrals. Dropbox’s greatest advantage on others is that it works equally well on PCs and Macs, Android and iOS. The service is so simple and elegantly designed, that it’s easy for anyone to master. Its desktop applications seamlessly blend with your computer’s file system. It offers AES 256bit and two layer verification for added security.

https://www.dropbox.com/