Google Docs – You are crazy to not backup your data

Most people do not backup their data. A recent example of this foolishness includes the cancer researchers who were traveling in Oklahoma. Summary: their car was broken into, their MacBook stolen and all of their research is gone. Why? They didn’t have a backup.

Now, at Blacktip IT Services, we recommend multiple backups, both onsite (Time Machine, multiple drives) and offsite (CrashPlan or JungleDisk) for all of your core data. Having at least two if not three backup types is essential to conducting smart business.

However, how do you backup your cloud services? You’re probably asking yourself: “Why do I need to backup any of my cloud services, they backup themselves, don’t they?” Well, yes. However…

What happens when those services a) have downtime or b) you don’t have Internet access and you really need the data? You need an answer. And there are answers, thankfully.

Google Docs has a backup offering

Today, we’ll talk about a backup solution specific to Google Docs. In the future, we plan to discuss additional cloud backup solutions. In conducting our research for Google Docs, we found two tools. So let’s talk a little about each.

Spanning Backup

The team at Spanning Backup have built a relatively novel cloud-based solution to providing backup of your sensitive Google Docs information.

Let’s take a look at their video (yes, it shows Windows 7 instead of the Mac OS X – boo) and review the highlights of the service:

Feature Highlights:

• On-Demand Backups — In addition to daily scheduled backups, Spanning Backup supports on-demand backups, so you control exactly when your data is backed up.
• Integrated Restore — Spanning Backup has native Restore, and supports complete, one-click restoration of data directly into Google Apps. Other Google Apps backup products lack any restore functionality whatsoever and instead rely on the basic import functionality of Google Apps.
• Backs Up Critical Metadata — Other Google Apps backup solutions don’t support nested folders, sharing and permissions settings, or even things as basic as contact photos, all of which are backed up and restored transparently by Spanning Backup.
• Complete Support for Native and Non-Native Files — Spanning Backup supports both native Google Docs formats (documents, presentations, spreadsheets, drawings, and PDFs) and non-native formats like Microsoft Office, MP3, MP4, TIFF, etc.
• Selective Backups — Spanning Backup allows you to specify which calendars, contact groups, or document folders are backed up. Other products do not.

Finally, the pricing of $40/year is pretty reasonable given the feature set and functionality of the product.

CloudPull

Ok, so we’ve seen the option to backup the cloud to another “cloud”. How about if we want a local copy of our Google Docs? This is where CloudPull excels.

To see a video demonstration of CloudPull, please press the play button for this QuickTime video:

Feature Highlights:

• Backs up automatically, once every hour.
• Drag and drop backups from CloudPull to the Finder at any time, for easy recovery.
• Maintains backups of prior revisions of documents.
• Maintains backups of documents that have been deleted from Google Docs.
• Allows you to preview your backups via QuickLook.
• Allows you to search documents by filename.
• Supports up to ten Google accounts.

Pricing? Again, very reasonable. CloudPull is desktop software, and costs $25 (non-recurring). You can even purchase it via the Mac App Store.

Summary

Blacktip IT Services handily recommends using both of these products for Google Docs backup. It’s not an either/or choice here. The cost is low, the feature set is excellent and know that you have a solution for your sensitive data.

It’s simple: spend the money and have the backup of your Google Docs – know that your data is safe.