Online Backup vs Harddisk Backup Software - A detailed discussion

A recent study from Google exposes that 8% of computer hard drives are most likely to fail within two years of operation. Well, that implies every twelve computer hard drive would crash within first 24 months of operation. Apart from failure you might loose files if your laptop or PC is stolen, or you permanently delete some important files. This is why having a constant backup of your system is sine quo non. We had already discussed about various backup software for Windows, Linux and Mac. With all said and done there remains  a puzzle still. Which one is better, more reliable, safer, secure way to backup data - external hard drive or Online backup services? Let’s find out the answer.

Difference between online backup and backing up files in external hard drive

To begin with let’s draw out the basic difference. Online backup services stores a copy of the content on your computer’s hard drive like important documents, photos and digital music via Internet to a third party online backup service. On the contrary, with external hard drives you can backup your sensitive files on separate hard drive.

Which is a better solution - Online or hard drive?

The first and foremost thing about external hard drive is that they are vulnerable to same hardware failure issues like the internal hard drive in your computer. There are chances that they might fail or crash. That put you at high-risk of losing information. In case of online backup services they don’t use a single hard drive to store your information that is surely more reliable.

External hard drives are as much secured as you have kept them. What that implies is, if you are careless your external hard drive might be lost or misplaced leading irreplaceable loss of data. So even a small negligence on your part can cost your dearly.  On the better side if we consider online backup services they store your backup in remote and secure computer servers that are maintained by professionals. Interestingly, some of the major corporations rely on the same online backup services like the one available to general consumers to store important business information.

Storage limitation is an important drawback of the external hard drives. Suppose you purchase a 100 GB external drive it will only store 100 GB of information. For storing more information you would have to delete some of your files. Else, you can expand your computers backup capacity with an additional drive. For the online services you won’t have crunch of space since most of the top online back up services offer unlimited storage capacity for your vital documents. With more than enough storage you won’t need o delete any of your files. You can save on the cost of buying any external hard drives.

If we calculate the cost per gigabyte of external hard drive for backup; clearly, it is more expensive than the online per gigabyte storage. On an average the online backup services are about 50% cheaper per gigabyte than using external hard drives.  Online backup is obviously a cheaper root, but the equation is straight, you get what you pay for.

The top-notch online backup services allow unlimited storage, so you can backup multiple PCs with a single service. On the contrary as the storage space for external hard drives are limited, it is unlikely to be used in multiple PC.

How much secure is an online backup system?

The online backup services use the same security measures that the financial institutions use for protecting sensitive data. What that infers is your data is as secure as your bank account or credit card information.

What is the disadvantage of online backup over external hard disk backup?

One of the evident shortcomings of online backup is that you need b connected to the Internet to access the online backup service. The online backup services transmit the files to be backed up from your computer via Internet to the online backup service provider. Although, its takes just a few minutes to take the backup, if you backup your files regularly, still you need access to internet to access the backup. In case, the Internet is severed you loose the ability for both back up and recovery.

The online backup system can be great asset for smaller data files less than 2 GB. However, for backing up massive data storage it requires high bandwidth.To backup data more than 50 GB you would require hours to upload. You can guess the time for terabytes of data.

Again backing up an entire server to allow bare metal server recovery is an issue with online solutions. Not only the speed of backup and recovery is relatively slow, the monthly cost of bandwidth and data storage might hang up.

The external drives with disaster protection helps to overcome a lot of problems with online backup.The external drives are connected directly to the computer using a variety of network interfaces, so the transfer speed is extremely fast. An user can configure the external drive as another disk drive say E: drive and save the work directly to the drive. Since the external drive has disaster protection, this would allow real time protection against natural disaster - main reason for backing up data remotely.

Moreover once you purchase an external drive, you get rid of the on-going monthly expenses.

Most importantly with online backup you have to rely on an external company for protection of your confidential data.

Conclusion

It’s hard to single out which of the two back up strategies are better, as it entirely depends on your need and purpose of back up. Overall, what seems evident is that for small scale backup the external hard drives can have an edge, but for large sized companies online backup solutions are most feasible.