Planning a Trip? Taking your laptop? Have you thought about ways to backup your laptop while on the road? What will you do if your laptop is damaged or your hard drive fails and you're far from home? To be safe, you're travel plans should include a laptop backup plan.

I spend a lot of time traveling. I'm not talking about short two-week vacations. I'm talking about extended travels that take months. Over the years I've traveled over most of the continents and I've sailed on most of the seas. During the past nine months, I've been traveling throughout Southeast Asia, most of the time in Thailand. During these travels I've learned about laptop backup the hard way, by losing valuable computer data and struggling to find some type of data recovery system that works well on the road.

You'd be surprised how many people you meet on the road carrying laptops. Just go into any guesthouse and you'll see backpackers, expats, and travelers from around the world checking email, writing articles, and carrying on business while they're on the move. The smart travelers I've met all have some kind of laptop backup plan. I can tell you from experience that laptop backup and recovery is essential when you're on an extended journey away from home.

The time to think about how you're going to backup a laptop on the road is during the initial planning of your trip.  That way you'll have plenty of time to take advantage of the easiest and best way to backup your laptop, which in my opinion is online backup. One thing you have to consider when using online backup is the time it takes to complete the initial data storage. It can take up to a week to complete the initial online backup, so you'll want to do that prior to your departure.

After that, your online backup service will only be backing up files that have changed since the previous backup. So, subsequent laptop backups are practically instantaneous. Since online laptop backup is automatic, your laptop will continually be backed up every time you're logged onto the internet. While you're at the local internet café checking your email, your backup software will be working in the background doing your data storage in real time. What could be easier than that?

When you travel as much as I do, sooner or later you're going to lose your data. Whether your laptop takes a dive into the Mekong River or it gets trampled by a buffalo, as long as you have your data recovery plan in place, you won't have to worry. Just log onto any available internet connection and restoring your laptop files will be a breeze.