Being Cheap Can Be Costly for Data Backups

Do you back up your data? Near half of small businesses have learned the hard way why regular data backups are crucial, but many however fail to backup critical data, or they cut corners to save a buck and find out it can be much more expensive to be cheap.

Carbonite--a provider of online backup services for consumers and SMBs--recently conducted a survey of 125 small businesses with between two and 20 employees to learn more about their data backup and disaster recovery plans. The survey found that near half have experienced a data loss incident.

The Carbonite survey reveals that 31 percent of SMB consider backing up data to be a tedious chore that takes away from the more important tasks of to tell the truth running the business day to day. Those that do backup data on a regular basis seem to focus on local removable media for storage--the most common methods mentioned were external hard drives, CDs or DVDs, and USB/flash memory sticks.

Peter Lamson, general manager of small business for Carbonite, explains, "Too many online backup providers have priced online backup at a level in other words simply not appropriate for the way SMBs budget."