At some locations the internet goes down on occasion. cloud drive Is your internet connection reliable enough? A backup internet line is advisable. If it does you will have lost all access to your data and applications. Remember all of these savings fall straight to the bottom line. It can go to you as the business owner or back into the business to drive growth. Getting 20,000 of IT Support Services for 1,000 per month implies an annual saving of 8,000. Taking Gordon's advice, I signed up for a trial version of Carbonite and had it working in under a half hour. cloud drive And I can't complain that today's online backup services are hard to use. After a quick installation, all I had to do was right-click on the folders or files that I wanted backed-up, select the option that was newly added to the right click menu and watch it go. I also had to tell the software how often I wanted a backup to occur (daily at 2 a.m., for me). cloud backup Because I've moved much of my mainstream computing to The Cloud, I find I can access it from just about any PC and from my mobile phone. Having my Cloud in my phone, which can browse the Internet, is a phenomenal tool. If the Palm Pre or the iPhone were to work with my wireless service provider, I would upgrade and give up my trusty Motorola A1200. Just yesterday I rescued data from an ageing computer that had frozen. I meet many people who claim they store their backups on an external hard drive or on memory sticks. It was set to back-up to an external hard-drive. The last backup was 3 years old. Its owner assured me it backed up regularly. When I asked him where to, he had no idea. Not a bad idea - except the external hard drive had spent the last 3 years living in the roof of his garage. Do you want to guess where? The user interface is very simple. You never even have to install anything or purchase any device to use their service. Most cloud storage providers make sure that anyone, even without very technical knowledge of computers and the internet, can use their program. Second, you will be provided with an account to access their portal. All it will require is a reliable internet connection which will connect you to the servers. While still designed as a document repository for its web-based apps, the advanced real-time collaboration capabilities set it apart. LayerOnline Google has been in the file storage business for a while now with the ability to warehouse data first using Gmail and then with Google Docs. But now, Google has finally forayed into true cloud-based storage with its Drive product. Be sure to check it out. And because this is Google we are talking about, the amalgamation with the rest of the Google and Android ecosystem raises the cool factor. This one is among the top of the heap. Use at least two flash drives just as you would use two external hard drives. Flash drives are easy to lock away, or keep in your pocket. cloud backup Keep very sensitive data on flash drives, not on the laptop's hard drive. Think about that - it means that there is a high likelihood that your backup is not working correctly unless it is proactively monitored. Well about 10% to 15% of backups fail every night. If I want to do anything on any of those devices via internet, I just turn on the smartphone hotspot. I've tried a few other provider plans and wifi cards, but the problem with those has been slow and intermittent connectivity. If I need another gig of data, it's only $10 a month and I'd never go over 5 gigs. I've used Spring, AT&T, Virgin Mobile, and a few others. I came close a couple of times when I was doing web and course design work and working with a lot of multimedia. cloud drive My smartphone hotspot provides internet access on my tablet, laptop, and notebook. Verizon provides free 4 gigs of data per month and I've never gone over that. 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. This is especially important if you are just starting out and you do not have your own product to promote. cloud backup What you first need is to target services from affiliate programs like Amazon and eBay that are highly sellable. Join affiliate programs like Amazon and eBay that can let you earn commissions when you made a sale of their products. These issues can cause loss of data stored in your hard drive. So always backup whenever possible depending on how often you use your computer and what you usually do with your PC. Remember that computers are now exposed to various threats and they do experience problems. A good tip from the experts is to backup on a daily basis if important files change every day or weekly if they change every week.