Sunday, March 31, 2013

Happy World Backup Day!


Or would that be MERRY World Backup Day? OK, so in any case...

What would you do if one morning your computer just wouldn't boot up? Or you accidentally deleted or overwrote an important, critical file? Do you have backups? And do they work?

Here's some hard facts, courtesy of SpiderOak :
  • A hard drive is a mechanical device, and as such is the most failure-prone component in your computer.
  • If you need to recover your data when the drive fails, you will probably have to pay hundreds of dollars to a recovery service, and there is no guarantee that your data will be fully recovered.
  • The real-world observed failure rate on hard drives is around 3%, and much worse under non-ideal conditions.
  • Accidents happen, whether it’s a coffee dumped on your laptop or a stuck delete key that sends an important folder to the trash without you noticing. Human error is one of the main culprits.
  • Laptops and cellphones are attractive targets for a thief

Because we at Hello World Web Design, Hosting and Domains believe so strongly in backups and want to encourage everyone, whether you're one of our customers or not, to get into the habit of making regular backups of your work, we're passing along information on this promotion for you to get 5GB of FREE backup space from SpiderOak! This promotion is good for the next 48 hours, so I suggest you don't wait and miss it.

Are we an affiliate of theirs? No. Are we getting anything from this for promoting their service? No. At least not yet, but we are considering checking out their affiliate program in the future.

I've used SpiderOaks' services for my personal backups since 2006, when the whole "cloud" thing was still fairly new. I've seen their service slowly grow and evolve over the years.The true value of SpiderOaks' core philosophy didn't shine until I saw the security breaches to other cloud backups services.

With SpiderOak, you'll find privacy and security are their foremost priority...not an afterthought like some other backup/sync services.
  • SpiderOak maintains their own network, avoiding security issues from 'the cloud";
  • They're HIPAA compliant;
  • They operate under a "zero-knowledge" policy, for the ultimate in privacy;
  • Their support is top-notch.

There are aspects of SpiderOak I look forward to seeing improved upon...like their gawdawful website, seeing the Android app fleshed out a little bit more (and requiring a login to see "favorites"), and better documentation for issues like when I couldn't get the SpiderOak client to install on a Windows XP (SP3) machine (turns out it needed very specific Visual C++ 2008 and 2010 libraries, contact me if you need help with this). And OK, better documentation (like a full-on knowledgebase) in general.

I don't know about you, but I'll take stable and secure over flashy and hacker-prone ANY day of the week (and twice on WorldBackupDay Sunday!).

If you're a new user, you'll get 5GB of space when you sign up (OR 50% any paid plan!). But where's the love for existing users? SpiderOaks' blog post didn't exactly spell that out, so I'm including those instructions here.

Happy Backing Up!


If you're an existing user, you can use ths promo code to upgrade from the standard 2GB for free to 5GB for free.
  1. Open your SpiderOak client.
  2. Click "Buy more space" at the bottom of the first screen.
  3. A browser window will open, to this page: https://spideroak.com/user/billing/order
  4. Enter "WorldBackupDay" into the promo code box and click "update."
  5. You'll be given the option, through this promotion, for your choice of:
    5GB free;
    100GB for $10 a month;
    100GB for $50 a year (equals 50% off, it's normally $100 per year).
  6. 6. Click "Next" and confirm your plan.



Don't be an April Fool. Backup Today!



Mara Alexander
Founder and CEO, Hello World Web