For SOHO or larger-capacity applications, 3.5-in. external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disk drives with capacities of 500GB are available for around $250; they connect via USB but use an external power source. Many USB devices, particularly larger-capacity devices, come with some form of basic backup or file-synchronization software, password protection and encryption (see "" or "").

Network-based backups are becoming more popular; however, suitable network bandwidth or a backup service provider may not always be available. Another challenge for network-based backups is that some broadband networks in remote locations have slower upload speeds than download speeds. The faster download speed will be helpful when you need to recover files; however, slow network-upload speeds can result in backup performance bottlenecks. If you don't know what your network upload and download speeds are, check out the tools at the DSL Reports Web site.

Backups in action

Chris Lawless, a systems engineering contractor at the Defense Acquisition University section of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), needed a robust, reliable method for protecting data on remote computers, including laptops, instead of sending failed disks to a recovery service. Lawless looked at various vendors' offerings and selected Atempo LiveBackup from Atempo Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. LiveBackup has enabled the university to back up more than 700 laptops and desktops comprising several terabytes of data over a secure network supporting full bare-metal recovery. Being part of DOD, the university does not allow backup of laptops over nonsecured public networks.

LiveBackup comes in two versions: LiveBackup, which performs everything down to bare-metal restores, and LiveBackup Express, for documents, .pst files, etc. LiveBackup is recommended for small businesses and sells for $75 per host machine. LiveBackup Express is more suited for home use and sells for $39 for each machine license.