Some things are certain in life – birth, death, taxes and hard drive failure. It might not have happened to you yet, but it will. This is why backups are critical, but how reliable are your backups? These days the best way to keep your data safe is to migrate to the cloud. This saves the worry of remembering to backup, or verifying your data. Online backup services take all the worry out of data recovery.

Before opting for the cheapest solution, think about the features provided and what best suits you. Bonus features such as deleted file recovery, automatic backup and bandwidth consumption need to be considered. Similarly how do you want to back up your data – continuously, incrementally or manually? Just as important is the restore functionality. How easy is it to recover your data?

Security is another consideration. Transferring your data and storing it online comes with a certain amount of risk. Think about encryption whilst in transit and personalised encryption keys, ensuring only you have access to the data. Does your provider offer geo-redundancy? Or is your data stripped across more than one data centre to safeguard against natural disaster or fire? If your computer is stolen, remote wipe may be an invaluable feature!

How versatile is access? Can you access your stored data on mobile devices and if so what operating systems do they support?

Lastly, think about the help and support offered. A variety of choice such as live chat, email, FAQs and good website information is important – but can you pick up the phone and talk to someone?

If you take a look at the reviews, you will find providers such as CrashPlan, BackBlaze and iDrive are some of the most popular. Each of these offer good value, easy setup and painless data recovery.