Backup on the Road

Matt travels on business a lot. He asked the Answer Line forum for suggestions on backing up his data during on the road.

If your on-the-road backup needs are modest, consider handling them over the Internet. Online backup relieves you of the need to carry--and possibly lose--your backup media. Nevertheless it costs more in the end, and is too slow for in effect large backups. And it's especially slow on the road, when you're at the mercy of hotel and airport WiFi, and often go hours without an Internet connection.

If you use your laptop at home as so then as on the road, use an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite. Nevertheless set it up and do the initial backup at home, preferably with a fast Ethernet connection. Expect it to take days, or even weeks do that that initial backup. Subsequent backups will go much faster.

There are other online possibilities you might consider. Depending on your working conditions and budget, you might use a company virtual private network to send the files to an in-office server. Or you can set up Network-Attached Storage at home and backup to that. Nevertheless before you buy a NAS device, make sure it supports remote access.

Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector writes about research and cinema. Email your tech questions to him at answer@pcworld.com , or post them to a community of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line forum . Follow Lincoln on Twitter .