It depends on what you’re backing up. In general, it’s unlikely to be enough.
Online backup services can be a useful component of a broader backup strategy, but they are not enough. There are several factors to consider, including security, completeness, speed, and cost, before deciding if online backup is the right thing for you.
Online backup
Online backups are convenient but not enough. They can be slow, incomplete, and vulnerable to security risks. Use them as part of a broader backup strategy, including local full-image backups, to ensure comprehensive protection of your data. Of course, the best backup strategy is the one you’ll consistently use.
The cloud
“Moving to the cloud” is a popular buzz phrase, and online backup is one of the poster children for the concept. In a nutshell, with ubiquitous connectivity, why not store important data on servers on the internet — in the cloud?
By using third-party internet services and servers, you can keep data online: email (nothing new here; these services have been around for decades), documents (Google Docs and Microsoft OneDrive are two examples), and more. The advantage is that with a computer and a browser, not only can you access your documents from just about anywhere, but you can be less concerned about system and software crashes on your computer.
So, if the cloud is such a good place for your data (a debatable subject for another day), is it also a good place for the backups of your data?
It’s an option if used properly, but there are definitely concerns to consider: online backups don’t back up everything you’ll need; they require being online; your online account could be hacked; and your data could be exposed.
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An online backup isn’t practical for everything
It’s just not practical to back up everything online.
For example, it would take days, if not weeks, to upload a complete image backup of your machine. This is due to the limited upload speed of your internet connection compared to the size of the image.
Most online backup services ignore your system and back up only your data. Even then, you need to be careful to ensure they’re backing up what you think they are. For example, if you keep data outside of your default Documents folder, you may have to take extra steps to tell the service to back that up as well.
The implication is simple: if you have a major system failure and lose everything, your online backup won’t help restore your machine. It’ll restore your data after you’ve rebuilt your machine and reinstalled the operating system and applications.
That’s a valid choice, but it’s a choice you need to be aware of.
An online backup requires being online
This might sound obvious, but many times it’s not: you must be online for an online backup to work.
If you add a lot of data — say a day’s worth of active photography — that data will take time to upload and be backed up. If you turn your computer off at the end of the day, and those photos have not yet been uploaded, they aren’t backed up. They may automatically resume uploading when the machine is next turned on, but until then, if anything happens to that machine or hard disk, you risk losing them.
This is a common scenario when traveling, where connectivity is limited and slow. It’s easy, particularly with photos, to accumulate data faster than you can back it up.
An online backup is… online
Your backup is in the cloud. That’s kinda the point, right? Accessible from anywhere and from any computer?
The risk is the same risk you run when using any online service: if someone steals your account information, they have access to whatever you’ve stored in the cloud. If you’ve been backing things up online and your backup account is compromised, the attacker could have access to everything.
The good news here is that this is something within your control; it goes back to the basics of online account management and safety. Use good, strong passwords, don’t write them down, don’t use the same password for multiple purposes, use a password vault, use two-factor authentication, don’t share with people you don’t absolutely trust, stay safe in open Wi-Fi hotspots, avoid malware, and so on.
The steps to keeping your online information safe are relatively easy, but the cost of failure can be high.
An online backup is on someone else’s computer
Many people complain about the security of their data as distinct from the security of their account. Those concerns typically fall into three categories:
- Your data will be exposed should the online backup service be hacked, as I mentioned above.
- Your data will be exposed should the online backup service receive a warrant or other demand from a law enforcement agency or other government entity.
- Your data will be exposed to the online service itself, which could use it for purposes unknown.
Depending on where you live, where the online backup service is located, and the sensitivity of your data, these can be valid concerns.
As long as you stick with reputable online backup services, the technology typically encrypts your backups in such a way that no one but you can see them. If you’re still concerned, you can take the extra step of encrypting the data yourself.
Do this
So is an online backup a good idea?
In my opinion, yes, but only as part of a larger backup strategy.
Start with a periodic full image backup of your computer. This way, you know everything is backed up. Should your hard drive ever die completely, you won’t be faced with reinstalling the operating system and all your applications from scratch; you just restore the backup.
Then consider adding an online backup of your data. Depending on your approach, this could result in nearly real-time continuous backup of your data, or it could be an alternative to running your local backup program every day. When something goes wrong — from an accidentally deleted file to a destroyed computer (or even home) — you know that your data, at least, is safe.
I strongly recommend against using only an online backup service. However, the best backup strategy is the one you’ll use. If online backup is the technique you’ll actually use, use it.
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I keep all my personal files encrypted inside my OneDrive folder. My OneDrive folder is my Documents folder. My Music, Pictures, Videos, and Downloads are all in my OneDrive folder.
I used to keep my home computer on full-time when I traveled and used TeamViewer to access my files. I use OneDrive as my file server and I can access all of my files anywhere in the world, either on my laptop in the OneDrive folder or via the OneDrive website on another computer.
I perform system image backups when I’m home. OneDrive is my backup when I travel.
Dropbox or any other cloud sync service are good for that.
I sync my desktop PC with OneDrive, and I sign in on it, and my two laptop PCs using the same Microsoft account, so my files on OneDrive are accessible on all three computers. While it’s nice to have my files stored off-site, I also generate a full system image, monthly. I used to use a more intensive backup regimen, involving daily differential images, and weekly full system images, but it recently occurred to me that I don’t make many changes to my computers anymore, so the monthly full system images seem good enough for me, at least for now. I’ve always believed in the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Son), so that’s why I made this change. If there are valid reasons for employing a more intensive backup regimen as I used to do, please comment,
Ernie (Oldster)
That makes sense. All you’d lose are a few program updates and a little data that’s didn’t make it into your OneDrive folder. I have a backup and retention plan set up with Macrium Reflect and EaseUS Todo on my various machines. I set the backup scheduling when I set up the computr and haven’t hd to think about it since. That saved a lot of time when my HDD crashed, when I got malware and decided restoring from backup was easier than fighting the virus, and when I upgraded to an SSD. I’ll save a lot of time ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶ when need it again.
When I worked as a sysadmin, I would joke that I had backups of backups. We had backups on a NAS, portable hard drives (stored off site), RAID 5 and a cloud service. But if you are going to have one home backup medium, what would it be?
System image backups on an HDD.
Thank you Mark.
I pay for and use Carbonite for automatic backup. Every time I touch a file it gets backed up. I have needed it several times and it has saved my butt. Any comments about this type of cloud backup?
Carbonite here also. I like it because I don’t want changes in the cloud to modify files on my computer. So far, so good.
It’s a great supplement to system image and incremental backups.
How Do I Back Up My Computer?
Is Cloud Backup Enough?
Carbonite was also my go-to for my clients. I manage about 75 regular clients, as well as an additional 50 or so “occasional” clients’ computer(s). I’ve since moved 99% of them to IDrive strictly for budgetary reasons — Carbonite is just too darn expensive for what most people need. I also agree a local backup drive is essential, so “belts and suspenders” is the theme of the day!
I will never, ever (ever) use cloud backup for anything for the following reasons.
No one can guarantee that the cloud service will never go away. Companies go bankrupt or change their policies. A quota that is large enough today may be reduced without warning.
No one can guarantee that my data is securely stored. Especially in today’s political climate, Orange Julius Caesar may suddenly decide that the FBI must have access to my data (for undefined national security reasons).
Even if I encrypt my data before backing it up to the cloud there is no guarantee that today’s encryption will still be unbreakable tomorrow.
Most, if not all, cloud backups also keep a local copy on your computer. As for encryption, that might be crackable eventually, but you’ll have ample warning that this is about to happen. For example, most experts recommend at least 20 characters. Stay ahead of the curve wit 25 or 30 and your files should be safe. Three letter agencies might be able to decrypt them, but if you are in their sights, you have more to worry about.
I’m not trying to change your mind. It’s for the benefit of other readers.
I live and die by my favourites – its like my old 3-drawer filing cabinet for info. I don’t think Cloud backs this up? I would love to know an easy way to backup favourites regularly.
It depends on WHICH favorites you’re talking about (there can be many), and how you’re backing up.
Let’s roll back the years. The hospital was running a new IBM system 36 and the backup machine an HP 3000 my boss was rather fond of since he had a hand in designing it’s architecture. (The HP 300 spoke 6 native code languages. So capable and so many, not all of them were ever employed)
A dedicated land line from the hospital to our data retention center. The IBM sent binary which went into our room warming huge 50 and 100 MB disc drives, 2 foot tall and deep and 20 inches across. Checksums on all data was ran, errors were flagged and multiple back and forths went on until all data was verbatim replicated. Then repeat the checksum process sending the data onto the streaming tapes for storage. Errors not allowed. Our data was occasionally used in courts for things like wrongful death law suits.
To the present. Would I trust my computer, my router, the fiber optics, the net backbones and the receiver gadgetry in the cloud end to perfectly preserve my data without any corruption? An ice cube chance on the floor of hell comes to mind.
Especially when storage is dirt cheap and I can do a double or triple backup on my computer requiring only the trust of my SSD reads and writes and the quality of my backup program. Speaking of which, I’m going to run an incremental backup now while I take a potty break. Only takes a couple of minutes.
I trust my cloud backups to give me a near real-time backup of my files. I don’t trust it as the only backup of those files. It’s too fragile. I take regular system image backups and daily incrementals. It’s a belt and suspenders approach.
Since my last post, because either OneDrive or Windows kept trying to enable the OneDrive backup feature, I decided to drop OneDrive in favor of a different ‘cloud’ provider – mega.nz. After testing mega for a few months on Garuda Linux, I decided to make the switch. First I configured OneDrive to use the “Make all my files available offline” option so I don’t lose anything, then I disabled the OneDrive app, uninstalling it once I was sure my files were safely backed up elsewhere.
Mega offer’s a free account that includes 20GB of storage, with my data being encrypted end-to-end during transit, and when stored on the mega website, keeping/storing the encryption key on my computer, so no one but me can see the content of my files without my permission. I don’t use mega’s backup feature. Instead, I use their desktop app to set up real time synchronization of selected folders/directories on my computer with corresponding folders on mega.nz. Because I dual-boot Windows with Garuda Linux, I employ a more complex scenario than most people will need, and I experimented with the provider for a few months on Garuda Linux before I committed myself to making the change in Windows as well, so I created what I consider to be the default file names on mega.nz for synchronization with Garuda Linux, then when I switched Windows from syncing with OneDrive to mega, I selected folder names that reflect their association with Windows where appropriate.
After a few evolutionary changes to the organization of how my files are stored on mega.nz, in Garuda Linux I now sync my Documents directory with a Documents folder, my Pictures directory with a Pictures folder, and my Music directory with a Music folder, and I’ve created the eBooks and resources directories locally, syncing them with folders of the same names on mega.nz.
To keep my Windows specific files separate from those for GNU/Linux, on mega.nz I created folders with names indicating their Windows association. I sync my Documents folder with a WinDocs folder, my Pictures folder with a WinPics folder, and my eBooks folder with a WinBooks folder. Additionally, I sync my Music folder with the Music folder and my resources folder with the resources folder, both of which already exist on mega.nz. Of course, I created the resources and eBooks folders locally in Windows.
Additionally, in Windows I use Macrium Reflect to create a backup set consisting of a weekly full system image and six differential system images, keeping four backup sets so I can access versions of my files, going back as far as twenty-eight days in the past. In Garuda Linux I use Rescuezilla monthly to manually create a full system image for recovery purposes. As far as I’ve been able to learn, there are no Macrium Reflect equivalent open source apps available for GNU/Linux, based on the claim that they cannot properly/safely image mounted partition(s) from within a running OS, even though Macrium does exactly that.
All this describes my current backup/recovery paradigm. I hope some of what I do can help others,
Ernie
@Ernie Outstanding but unrealistic. Taking into account the average MS Winows victim is unlikely to know even the simplest procedure to secure their data.
This is what MS wanted and now has with W 11, them to become helpless victims of their overarching control of both computer and data.
Learned the backup lesson the (almost) hard way a few yrs ago when M’soft “support” wiped out my data in a re-install after promising no such thing would happen. But it was safe at Backblaze, my offsite archive. It took hours to restore gazzillions of pix and some large video files plus financial stuff et al. However, with some patience, I was back in biz. It took almost 2 wks to first upload everything to BB but afterwards, backups take place throughout the day and in the background. And it’s cheap for unlimited storage. About a hundred bucks a year.
Locally, I use Macrium Reflect to image my two drives – with incremental (or differential – I still don’t know the difference)- daily. Those backups go onto a portable 4TB Passport drive sitting at home.
I had to reset Win 11 a couple of wks ago, re-loading the OS, WIn365, and other key pgms, but had no loss of sleep because I felt pretty secure (stuff can happen, I know).
Team leo’s core philosophy is pretty sound – don’t matter what scheme you use for backup as long as you do something. BTW, I have some unused floppies if anyone wants to use that system.
See this article for the difference between incremental and differential backups. It will help you decide which one is best for you.