Are You Protected?

Since I am a huge computer nerd and have worked alongside the IT department in a company for ten years, I know the importance of computer backups. I have seen more computers crash than I can remember. I have also had the experience of telling people who are having computer troubles that their hard drive has died. So I knew I had to have a good backup system in place, especially with all my documents, pictures, videos, and music on my computer. I looked at external hard drives, but they all had the same problem. They are attached to either your computer or network at your house. So what happens if you have a fire or flood or any other “act of God” at your house? Because of that I decided to go with Mozy, an online backup solution. They have a free account that you can upload up to 2 gigs of data, and an unlimited plan for $4.95 per month. And it’s a lot simpler than trying to make a backup set of DVD’s every few weeks and taking them to a safe deposit box.

The Mozy program runs in the background and uploads files when your computer is idle. It doesn’t have much impact on performance. And since the data is offsite, stored on their servers, you can restore it from anywhere. And if you are worried about security, they have excellent encryption, so your data is safe from intruders. The way it works is simple, once it has uploaded your backup, then it only has to upload any changes. The initial upload of 45 Gigs for me looks like it will take about 2 weeks, so it does take a while. But after that, the time spent uploading will be negligible.

Now why is this important? Because most pastors and churches I know have no backup system in place. All it takes is one hard drive failure and you can lose all your sermons, pictures, and videos from church. And if you are backing up to DVD or an external hard drive, are you actually taking your backups offsite? Let me encourage you to take advantage of online services like this. It is actually cheaper than external hard drives and it is much safer in the case of a disaster. It’s been working great for me and I look forward to feeling safe about my computer files again.

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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