Most businesses understand the importance of backing of their important data and the majority is pretty good about backing up their network servers. Studies show, however, that many small and midsize businesses still fail to adequately back up their PCs and laptops [1]. This might be especially true for the notebooks and home computers used by your mobile force, like the sales team, traveling executives and telecommuters.

It's not always clear why this is the case, but often it's simply not easy to do. Unless you're connecting to the business network regularly and using a robust backup and recovery system, many notebooks and desktop computers slip through the cracks.

The top causes of data loss

Hopefully, you haven't experienced one of the many problems that can cause your data to disappear forever. Among the most common causes of data loss are [2]:

  • Hard drive failure
  • Electronic attacks like viruses and malware
  • Loss of portable or desktop PCs due to damage or theft

How many documents would you lose if you spilled soup on your notebook tomorrow at lunch and lost your hard drive? How much of your precious data is backed up and can easily be accessed from another computer?

Introducing HP Upline

If the thought of losing your notebook right now and the information you have stored on it gives you the shivers, you're in luck. HP introduces its new HP Upline service to help small businesses like yours [3]. It's simple to use, boasts transfer rates at or near line speeds, and costs less than a dollar per day for three subscriptions and unlimited storage. Depending on the speed of your connection, you can transfer a 2 MB file in approximately 10 seconds [4].

HP Upline is designed to protect your documents as you create them by storing them in a fully-automated data hub. This hub gives you easy access to your data from any Internet connection and lets you readily access, share, backup and store digital content securely. You can share large files with customers and co-workers and publish files to multiple websites or blogs as soon as you make any changes. What's more, you can choose how often to backup your data to help ensure your files are protected always.

With HP Upline you can:

  • Securely access and share documents using any Internet connection
  • Ensure your data is backed-up and available when you need it
  • Feel safe and confident that your business critical data is protected
  • Search, open, edit, share, and publish files stored in a secure data hub

Protect your data

When you subscribe to the service, HP Upline lets you decide what files and directories on your notebook or desktop PC you want protected. Then it compresses and digitally encodes these important documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other critical data, and copies them to HP's Upline servers. HP Upline then automatically and continuously backs them up to online storage. The backup service can run with no user intervention at all so you don't have to worry about it or try to remember to do it yourself.

If you do happen to lose your computer, files can be migrated to your new system using HP Upline's data migration feature.

You have many choices when it comes to local devices on which you can back up data. Upline includes an archive feature to remind you to create regular backup copies onto a storage device. If you want or need a physical backup, HP has many options.

DAT and Ultrium tape drives use magnetic tapes to contain up to 1.6 terabytes of data each. They're easy to use and dependable, with low media costs. The HP D2D130 Backup System provides cost-effective data protection for up to six servers, with storage provided by hard disks with up to 3 terabytes of storage.