Unless you keep hard copies of the entire business, which nobody does, you'll never get it back. A cloud backup system is the most secure and safest being that your data is transferred and stored to off-line servers where hackers have no chance of breaking into your files. Just set it and forget it. Your cloud storage account will come with some default settings and you can change them if you want. LayerOnline Automated backup No need to make sure the external hardware is connected and turned on at the right time. You can back up your system once a day or even several times a day. Just keep your Internet connection on (something you probably do anyway), and your system will be automatically backed up as often as you need it to. cloud backup can range from free to $20/month. There are a few factors to consider. Upload speed, many of the free providers limit your upload speed to keep costs down, so it takes a long time for the initial backup. A backup internet line is advisable. At some locations the internet goes down on occasion. Is your internet connection reliable enough? If it does you will have lost all access to your data and applications. If you don't need calendar sharing with more than your partner, assistant and home, this is a no brain-er. Overall, the Google calendar system has been a major improvement for our small business, and solved most of the problems we had with both the Microsoft exchange server and Blackberry services. The best part is since we have less than 5 people that need to share each other calendar in a group, it is all for free. I think the limit is 50 per office. Originally from the UK, they now have an online presence in the US. cloud drive Zip Cloud is a relatively new player in the online backup marketplace. Zip Cloud is one the most user friendly online backup services you will ever use. Anytime you have a long period of time when you are in waiting mode, you can get work done. A travel office comes in handy at other times as well. How often have you seen people stuck in a traffic jam busy working on their smartphones or tablets? And there are always the various restaurants around that offer free wifi. I've found that many doctors' offices and automotive shops now have free wifi for customers. Not as surprised as that client of mine back in 1986 when he got a huge tax bill because I forgot to include a few deductions he had. But I'm not sold on this kind of service for my business. And you'd think by reading to this point I'd be a convert. So is hosting the way to go for small companies? For many, like Augustine, it's a great idea and one that will grow even more over the coming years. If computers are running out of anything, it is hard drive space. That room that is saved from using the Cloud services can be used for storage of important information (in paper form if necessary). A business should use online storage because it is less prone to accidents. If they store information locally, then they have to worry about their hard drives. Therefore, keeping some of the information in information Clouds makes a lot of sense. Hard drive space is continually shrinking. Let's see - 33 terabytes divided by 300 users equals an average of 0.11 terabytes per account (110GB). Most dedicated servers share 100Mbps uplink ports, so the maximum bandwidth of all accounts combined cap out at 33 terabytes. A Quad Core Server with 2GB RAM should be able to host 200 accounts (depends). What consideration was given to the reasons for? Was there enough info on which to base a reasonable decision? Are those really legitimate reasons? The possible benefits do not seem to have been completely thought through... Now just hang on here a moment! Sync can be downloaded alone or within the Windows Essentials package. The two previous programs were so similar that they decided to merge the two together this year. The beta Windows Live Sync is the love child of LiveMesh and the original Windows Live Sync. Basically Essentials is the shabang for Windows 7 encompassing photo, video, mail, etc into one organized package. There is also a way to get people to your site by using a video too. People love videos and will usually stay on a site longer with something to see. cloud drive Video Marketing with the right approach and proper editing, a shore video can go a long way. Perhaps you can't write, and maybe don't know how to use articles properly, or even where to get them. If you want to make the best use of the internet than create a blog, get blogging and then use the help provide online to make best use of your blog make money. First, it will require you to choose among the many storage capacities available. This flexibility makes online storage way cheaper than buying a new hard drive for your files. Depending on how much storage you want to purchase, you will be paying for that amount of storage alone. You can Google the model number and get the details pretty easily. It should give you a model of the hard drive like ST31500341AS ATA Device. [Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Information -> Storage -> Disks] Notice the [Model] item. Most drives today are SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives if you have a relatively new computer.