Don’t Roll the Dice With Your Important Data

Is your website safely backed up in case of a server crash or hacker attack?

How about your Twitter account?  Facebook?  Home computer?

Can you imagine what would happen to your business if you lost any of that data?  Eek!

Here’s a round up of cool tools I use to keep my data safe.  I’m a big fan of set it and forget it type backups, so most of these work like that.
Website Backups:

All good website hosts backup your data.  But it’s not a great idea to rely on those backups.  Usually they work great, but sometimes they’re corrupted or can’t be restored.  It’s always better to keep your own backups.

I use the feature built into cPanel (called the Backup Wizard) to create and download backups of my websites.  If you’re running WordPress you might also like this plugin (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFQIRQmJ0yE

Neither of these are “set it and forget it” style backups.  I have to remember to login and grab a current backup.  I put a weekly reminder on my calendar.

Social Networking Profiles:

My favorite easy way to backup my social networking profiles is Backupify.  You can backup Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more.  There are free and paid plans.  It works automatically so I don’t have to remember anything.

Some other options for backing up your social profiles and connections are:

• Social Safe – this is a program you download to your computer that will backup Facebook and Twitter.
• Backup My Tweets – web-based option for backing up your tweets.

Home Computer:

Last month my main desktop crashed.  Like crashed and burned.  (For reference, a fan is a really important part of a PC.  I learned this lesson too late.)  Luckily I had Mozy installed and running in the background.  While I was busy working, it monitored my PC and uploaded any changed files.  So it kept a constant backup of all my files securely on the Mozy servers.  I can login to their site and browse what was on my hard drive to find the files I need.  Once I get my desktop back up and running I’ll be able to easily restore it.  Absolutely worth the peace of mind.  You can get a free 2 GIG account by clicking the image on the left (it’s an affiliate link, if you prefer you can go straight to mozy.com instead).

Another option for home computer backup is Carbonite (I haven’t used it, but I’ve heard good things about it as well).

What backup options do you use?  Got any other services, programs, or websites you love for backups?