OK, you’ve scanned your document and processed it in to your trusted system. Many people stop there, but in my opinion many people are crazy.
One of the risks of going to a “paperless” system is that you are relying on digital storage, and that can be scary for a lot of people. Computers get stolen, hard disks die, files get deleted, houses burn down.
What are you going to do if you scan and shred all your tax documents to your laptop, and your laptop gets stolen?
Onsite Backup
There are a number of solutions and programs you can use for this, but my favorite is to use an external hard drive like a ioMega Prestige (1 TB, 1.5 TB, 2 TB).
With a solution like this, you can do a backup at a touch of a button. You can also use software like the highly-praised SyncBackSE (Windows only) to schedule it so you don’t eve need to think about it.
Mac users can use Leopard’s Time Machine with an ioMega or a Time Capsule.
Online Backup
There is one issue with onsite backup – it still doesn’t protect you from your house or office getting broken into, burning down, flooding, or any other disasters that can happen to your workspace.
For this reason, I am a big fan of using onsite backup as a first step, and then using an online backup service as a second backup. Nowadays they are encrypted and cheap, so for me it is a no-brainer.
The top services that I recommend are:
- Windows & Mac
- Free for under 2 Gigs, $4.95/month over that
- 448 Bit Blowfish Encryption
- Unlimited Storage
- Windows & Mac
- 15 Day Free Trial
- $49.95/year
- Unlimited Storage
- Encrypted
- Windows, Mac and Linux
- Free for under 2 Gigs, $10/month per 100 GB over that
- 2048 bit RSA encryption and 100% zero-knowledge environment
- Service Includes cross-platform secure Sync and webshare
Whichever service you use, once you have it set up and running in the background, you have the peace of mind that even if something catastrophic happens to your home or computers, all your important files are backed up and accessible.
DocumentSnap Workflow: Scan It – Process It – Back It Up – Shred It