When computer disaster strikes you will want to be sure a back up copy of your data exists, forget about trying to recover data from a dead hard disk, drives do not last for ever and the most cost effective and trouble free way to be prepared for when your hard drive dies is by storing a data back up copy, at the very least in weekly intervals.
At the moment the cheapest way to back up an operating system is offline using an external hard disk, the downside is that in case of a fire breaking out it would also destroy your offline data backup, that is why big corporations tend to keep their data backups stored at different buildings, the home user does not have this luxury but we can use online data storage.
With SpiderOak you can backup, synchronize, and share data across all of your computers, there is a free and paid for option, the only difference between them being that in the free option storage space is much lower.
The way I have been using SpiderOak until now is by creating a folder named “online backup” and pointing SpiderOak to upload and synchronize all of the data inside it. The initial backup takes quite a while, particularly if your upload speed is slow, once the initial backup has been done this back up utility runs in the background and automatically syncs any data changes inside that folder, which is much quicker, you can instruct SpiderOak to start automatically when you boot Windows, for what I have seen it runs on very low resources.
Everything uploaded to SpiderOak is done via secure SSL, their servers keep all of the data encrypted with the unbreakable AES256 algorithm, even if someone managed to break into their server they would not be able to read the data. You create the encryption password in your computer, SpiderOak staff never has access to it, if you lose your password there is no way to recover your data, it has been made this way for privacy reasons, if a member of staff went rogue your data would still be safe.
You can share your files stored online with others creating a local “Share room” marking chosen specific files as shared and SpiderOak will give you a link leading to that shared room/folder that can be protected with a password. Now you can send the link to whoever you want and share your files safely, your local “Share room” is automatically synchronized with any changes you make and SpiderOak software works in Windows, MAC and Linux.
There are many online data backup solutions out there but very few of them use encryption and take security as seriously as SpiderOak does, up to the point that no even themselves can access the data they are storing. Being compatible across computers and running on very low resources makes this online backup service is one of the best for security conscientious people.
