We often save our most important data and information on our computers without giving it a second thought due to the reliability they have provided recently. This is great until your hard disks fails or your PC / Laptop gets stolen. They can even burn up in a fire or we delete our stuff on our own by accident. All of that can happen and if it does we can only be thankful for a recent – up to date backup which will bring back your most valuable data.
Now you should use external hard drives for backups but they are not totally safe against damage or theft either. Any physical media is susceptible to failure. To resolve this issue, a very good and cheap method to backup your data online and in the cloud is Dropbox. There is a free basic plan with 2 GB space, and two pro plans with 50 GB for $9.99 per month or 100 GB for $19.99 per month. The free basic plan is more than enough for most users.
Why Dropbox?
Let's say you're editing a document at home. As soon as you click 'Save', Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers and your mobile devices (iPhone, Android and Blackberry coming soon!) instantly and automatically. It's as if you saved the document to all of your computers. This gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need.
You can easily share entire folders or photo albums with Dropbox. You can also send people links to specific files within your Dropbox.
Any file you put into your Dropbox folder is automatically backed up to their servers. Even if your computer has a melt-down, your files are safe on Dropbox and can be restored at any time.
Dropbox Replaces:
- Emailing file attachments to yourself and other people
- Using USB drives to move files between computers
- Renaming files to keep a history of previous versions
- Complicated backup software and hardware
Setting Up Dropbox
Signup
In order to sign up with Dropbox go to Dropbox Signup (With this Referral you will receive a 250 MB bonus on top of your 2 GB free space automatically!)
Download
After the successful registration, the download of the Dropbox application should start automatically. Dropbox is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
Install
Double click the downloaded application and start the install by clicking “Install”
Now Dropbox should be installed and up and running. When prompted, fill in the same data you filled in for your registration and choose either the free plan with 2 GB or one of the pro plans. Again, go with the 2 GB plan unless you need more space.
Working with Dropbox
Dropbox has created a folder on your computer which will synchronize with the online backup on each change.You can double click the Dropbox icon in your task bar to open that folder, or just right click the icon to get more options.
Backup
You are now able to change, delete and then copy files and folders with your most important data in the Dropbox folder, these will be automatically uploaded to the online cloud. Should you ever delete something from that folder by accident then you got about a month worth of time after deletion to be able to un-delete those files – also all changes will be saved should you need a previous version of a file.
Dropbox can also be used for various other things like an image gallery, to make files publicly downloadable or to share files to your friends and family.
I have been using Dropbox for about 6 months and the reason why I like it so much is because it's so easy and seamless to use. It just works and is dead simple. Also having the ability to have my files on my Android phone makes life a lot easier.
If you are interested in Dropbox, I highly recommend this backup solution. Sign up for Dropbox here!
Are you already using Dropbox? Let me know what you think in the comments!
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