Its painfully easy to take backups for granted: we simply assume that our data will always be there. But with the increased rate of hacking and viral infections as well as the ever-present risk of a hard drive crash, which can't always be predicted before it's too late, backups are an extremely useful repair tool. One of the main goals when finding a web host should always be to find a company who offers free backups or, rather, one who offers backups standard as part of their hosting plans. Most hosts should provide some ability to backup your data manually, but an ideal web host will also provide an automated backup service.

But what makes backups so important? Let's say that you're running a website and you've taken every possible countermeasure against viruses and hackers, and your host uses reliable, well-constructed hard drives. In a situation like this, it may sound like backups are unnecessary and are too time- and cost-intensive to make them worth your while. After all, if a host uses reliable hard drives there should be no risk of a hard drive crash, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. Despite a host's best efforts, a hard drive crash is always a possibility, and can sometimes happen with little or no warning whatsoever. Furthermore, with the increase in hacking attacks and the rising number of new viruses released into the wild every day, there's always a possibility that a virus will reach your site before your software is properly equipped to defend against it. Even if you manage to detect the intrusion, it may be too late to stop the invader from making changes to your site. Even if you think the odds of your site being infected or losing data are very small, it's never worth the risk to forego backups. Full site backups suddenly seem much less time- and cost-intensive when compared with the prospect of having to rebuild entire pages of your site by hand or losing irrecoverable data such as database entries.

Aside from the outside risks of the internet, having automatic site backups is simply convenient: if you or one of your site admins accidentally erases or modifies an important file, you'll have a backup available. If you want to try a new theme or layout on your site and it no longer loads properly, you'll have a backup available. Even if you just need a fast and easy way to revert to the old layout, you'll have a backup available. The more often your host creates automatic backups, the more confident you can be about making experimental changes to your site, knowing you won't lose data if you decide to revert the site to it's previous state.

Obviously backups are extremely useful for many reasons, but there's still one key question left unanswered: what should you keep in mind while looking for redundant backup hosting? Aside from the obvious (that is, look for a host with automatic backups), the most important question to ask is "how often." A host with automatic monthly backups is better than a host with no automatic backups at all, but unless you're running a relatively static site you'll probably want a host who runs backups at least once a week. Ideally you'll want a host who does daily backups, but your need for daily backups will largely depend on how often your website is updated or modified. Another thing to consider is storage location: does your chosen host provide offsite backups, or are they all stored locally? Offsite backups tend to be more expensive, but they are also much more secure. In the event of something occurring at the data center such as a break-in or a natural disaster, the offsite backups will be safely tucked away on a hard disk or tape drive at another secure facility.

The price of redundant backup hosting may be slightly higher than that of a typical web host, but the value is immeasurable when a crisis arises. A potentially crippling loss of data can be averted quickly and effortlessly just by having recent backups on hand. In closing, we at Secure Hosting Directory would like to leave you with a parody of The Beatles' "Yesterday" that will help to remind you of the importance of backing up your data regularly: