How do online backup services work?
Most online backup services allow you to download a small computer program on your laptop or desktop computer. This application will allow you to select which files you would like to backup and set up automated scheduled backups of your files. The first time you use an online backup service it can take several hours or even days to scan and backup all of the files on your computer’s hard drive. However, once that initial set up is complete the online backup service will only need to backup new files or those that have changed. This will typically only take minutes if you schedule your automated backups to occur relatively frequently. We recommend that consumers backup their files every day to ensure that they are protected in the unfortunate event of file loss.
An online data backup service is downloaded from one of the website and installed on the computer to be backed up. Central control is installed on a your operating system to administer the service on local and remote computers. Using the central control, the administrator selects what data to back up, the frequency of back up, the time of back up, and (depending on the service) how long the back up is retained in vaults. At the time selected, the agent compresses and encrypts the data, then transfers it to the specified website’s primary data center. The data is then backed up to a secondary remote data center. If a restore is needed, client uses the central control to select the data to be restored and the back up to the restore from and the restore process begins immediately. The encrypted data is transmitted back to the computer where the service decrypts and decomposes the data.
