Question : Problem: Online data backup recommendations ?

More and more I am realizing you can't be too cautious when it comes to backing up data.  Several new clients have come to me with failed hard drives / lost data...

Anyone have recommendations about online backup services?  There's so many and prices are all over the place.

Thanks!

Answer : Problem: Online data backup recommendations ?

Depends on the client.  I would love to SERIOUS test restores on a regular basis, but most of my clients (as most clients I've heard of) don't want to spend the extra money verifying the backups are good. I do periodically check each clients backup as best I can, even if that means restoring select data to other locations on my own, then I do it when I can.

As for what I do for clients, again, it depends.  Some I have scripts running using NTBackup to backup to files on external hard drives.  One client has a vital accounting database and a vital database of client data in Access.  This is backed up 3x per night.  One backup goes to a local machine and is just a copy of the database and accounting files (scripted to email upon completion with a log of the copy results), another of the 3 backups uses secure FTP to transfer a zipped copy of the database and accounting files to one of my own systems.  And the last is part of the standard scripted NTBackups.

Basically, the more critical the data, the more backups I do.  And off-site backups are critical.  But if you're like the above client, an online service is impractical for all but the most critical information.  Their internet connection is SDSL 1.5 and their TOTAL data, including email, images, database, documents, accounting files, exceeds 40 GB.  It would take a day at least to copy this data to an online system.  So you have to pick and choose.