When I first got hired on at my last job, I took the opportunity to splurge on additional hard drives.  Because of the recent news of one blog company not having proper redundant backups, I felt that I should step up my CYA (“cover your ass”) game.  I’ve installed a 1TB drive but have not yet selected and configured a software solution to automate my backups…

Today Yurani called me to ask for some advice on external hard drives.  Apparently her Mac is now down to 24MB (!) thanks to music and all the high-res photos she’s been snapping of her clients with her new dSLR camera.  Though I directed her away from the mini, portable drives to a much more cost-effective 3.5″-based drive, I still recommended that she investigate uploading her photos onto a website.  I believe that an off-site backup is a great emergency measure.  Sure, I’ve got plenty of my photos burned onto high-quality, long-life Verbatim DataLifePlus CD-Rs, but they’re in the same apartment as my computer.  What if there was a fire?  They’d both wind up in flames.

My favorite benefit of “cloud computing” is access anywhere; it’s great not to have to sit down at a specific computer, at a specific location to have access to my files or applications.  Also, depending on your host, they certainly are likely to have their own backup methods, in case something happened with the particular server your information was hosted.  Certainly there are issues with the concept.  What happens to your files when the company goes under?  What about hacking?  A large corporation is a bigger, easier-to-find target than if you remotely log into your home desktop server.  Also, privacy and ownership.  Are you giving up certain rights to your work and information by agreeing to let your host sponsor the costs of your usage (particularly something to think about with free services)? (more…)