If you, like me, are trying to live in the cloud as much as possible, there are times when the idea of a backup seems like a good idea.
Google, obviously, goes to great lengths to guarantee data security, but there are a couple of nightmare scenarios that do occasionally make me sweat.
One is that I might delete something that later I wish I hadn’t deleted. Once it’s gone and out of Google’s “Trash bin,” it’s gone, and Google can’t recover it.
The other is that someone might hack into my account, and delete all my mail. Once it’s gone, it too is gone, and there’s nothing Google can do about it.
That particular scenario is one used by various nefarious agents to undermine, for example, people working against oppressive governments. It’s not hard to imagine that someone might find this an easy way to seriously disrupt missionary activity. How would you feel if all of your email and contacts suddenly disappeared? Much of my brain would be gone!
Some might argue that this is a case in point for NOT living in the cloud. I’m not ready to go that far yet. My colleague Eric E. @ MUP has uncovered another service which I think is my solution-for-now: spanning.com.
Spanning.com provides a backup service for the entirety of your Google account (documents, mail, contacts, etc). There is no size limit or time limit (which is good, because I have a 400GB data drive in Google Docs).
The only thing it doesn’t backup right now–which I wish for–is music and photos. That would probably be difficult given piracy issues, however. (Or maybe data size issues?)
So, if you like me are trying to live as much on the cloud as you can – this may be something you want to check in to. It’s $30/year or $3/month.
