Computer backups are like insurance. You know you should have it but don’t think you will need it. When disaster hits, you regret dragging your feet. When you’re running a home business, you can’t afford to take that attitude. Think of all the work and data you’ve accumlated so far and tell me you don’t feel a slight twinge if you woke up tomorrow and all of that is gone. Sure you do.

Backing up is easy. There are many backup options available. With faster internet connections, backing up online is a popular option and they are affordable too. You can get online backup solution for as little as $5 a month. But if that is your only backup, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment later.

Don’t get me wrong. Backing up your computer online is a good option. Certainly better than nothing. For home based business, you should backup your computer online so you have a copy of your data off site. Should anything happen to your office like fire or flood, online backups would be very handy for you to start over with.

But online backups can be painfully slow even with high speed Internet. That’s because our hard drives are getting bigger and bigger. It is not uncommon for a home business to have 20GB or more to backup and that is a lot of data. Restoring your computer through the Intenet could take days.

What you should do is, backup multiple copies in different media. In addition to online backup, backup to an external hard drive. They are getting cheaper by the day. You can also restore your data pretty quickly. At regular intervals, make DVD or tape backups too because hard drives do fail. You can’t ever have too many computer backups. The more you have and the more often each of them are done, the better your chances of recovering your data in a timely manner.