External hard drives

For the solo lawyer, you can pick up a Western Digital My Book HD for Mac or PC. With capacities up to 8TB they are a great solution to back up a single computer. WD and others also make external HD’s in larger capacities.

NAS Drives

There are a host of NAS’s but one that Is highly rated by techradar.com is the Western Digital DL4100. This 

unit is available in up to 24TB configurations, making it suitable for small business environments. For Windows or Mac OS’s, it can be connected to redundant power supplies. The drives can be customizable RAID configurations, reducing downtime. Built for the multi-user environment, the data can be 256 AES encrypted, providing an extra layer of security. The ease of configuration as well as the suite of tools provided are also benefits. It is cloud-enabled.

Cloud Storage

Web storage sites such as Carbonite, Google Drive, iDrive, iCloud, Mozy or and others are all available to back up your data to the cloud. Check if they will accommodate all your devices, and ensure that your files on your backup device are being mirrored real time. You may need to obtain greater bandwidth to accommodate your new service. Also be aware that these are all US based, if that is a concern.

Canadian Cloud Storage

There are a number of Canadian based cloud storage providers. Bell Business Solutions, cacloud, Canadian Web Services, Radiant Communications, Cloud A, Cloud Pockets and Netelligent are but a few. But my favourite is sync.com. They offer “zero knowledge” storage (only you know your decryption key and password – don’t lose them as they can’t reset them), end-to-end encryption, and they act like an external hard drive, making it easy to use. They also state that they are ransomware proof.

There you go – different solutions for different sized practices. Time to back up!

© David J. Bilinsky