Sonic.net Soft-Launched Data Backup Service

This news was published on Sonic.net CEO blog by Dane Jasper

We soft-launched our new data backup service. That means that it is up and available, but we are not telling too many folks about it. (There is some concern that there will be lots of questions from customers to our support team, etc, so we’re going to start quietly and make sure things go smoothly.)

But, you read my blog, so you get to find out now.

Our goal is to add value to the Internet access products that we provide today, so we are offering free backup to all customers, with a modest limit on the amount of data we’ll store. Currently, this limit is 500 megs totally free – enough for some important documents and a lot of photos.

To give an example, while keeping in mind that photo size varies based upon how many megapixels your camera has, perhaps 150k-200k is a good average for jpeg photo size. Based upon that assumption, the free storage is enough for a few thousand photos. That’s great for someone who makes moderate use of a digital camera.

Of course, you can upgrade from free to paid service, and get up to 50 gigabytes of remote backup for just $4.95 per month.

When you imagine how you would feel if you lost all of the personal data and documents, photos, music etc on your personal PC, I think this is a great value.

You can add multiple PCs, so maybe your primary PC requires full backup, but the other systems around the house might fit into the free allowance. You can mix and match, and currently, there isn’t a limit on how many PCs you can back up as a Sonic.net customer.

Most of us neglect regular backups of the digital data that has become so much more important than it used to be. When photos were on paper, as long as your house didn’t burn down, they would last a lifetime. Now, every now and then a hard drive fails or we accidentally delete something, or a PC or laptop is stolen. Even CD-ROM or DVD backups are not immune to failure, and they must be taken off-site regularly to really provide real protection. That is not convenient, and the blank disks are expensive.

Remote backup over your broadband connection is a great solution to all of these challenges. Your important photos and documents are automatically encrypted on your PC then copied in the encrypted form to our data center for safe storage.

At the very least, everyone should use the basic free service – then, if you’ve got more than 500 megs of photos and other data, it’s probably worth the $4.95 per month to keep all that data safe and secure, so an upgrade makes sense if/when you reach that amount of usage.

It’s easy to set up, and software is available for both Windows and Mac users.