It’s everyone’s nightmare scenario – you slave away on a 15-page report, a quarterly presentation, a 5000-word article or a communications plan for your team and suddenly, a blackout or a computer malfunction leaves you with next to nothing. Hours of work go to waste because of a freak occurrence.

Big corporations invest millions of dollars in backup storage and disaster recovery solutions. How do you keep your work documents safe and backed up as a small team or as an individual? Here are 4 ways that can help ensure your files are kept safe.

1. Make it a habit to save early and save often on external devices such as a thumb drive – USB thumb drives make good backup devices because of their widespread use and relatively low cost. Whenever you save your work documents, save the latest copy in a thumb drive to keep a backup with you wherever you go.
    
2.  Use Google Docs to create and edit documents – Google Docs is a fast and free alternative to proprietary office applications. The best part? It’s all hosted online so you know that it’s safe and synchronized over Google’s cloud servers. You also have the benefit of sharing and collaborating with your team members using the web-based interface.
    
3. Use online storage tools like SugarSync or Dropbox – Save your files localy and have it SugarSync (or Dropbox) synched to any computer you use. With SugarSync you get 5GB storage for free – enough to save all your reports and presentations. Since it’s remotely hosted, you don’t have to worry about losing your data. 
    
4. Use Google Docs and synchronize Google Docs with SugarSync or Dropbox – This is the best way to simplify your online storage and collaboration tools. While Google Docs is a good tool for sharing document and colaborating, it doesn’t work very well as storage. On the other hand, Sugarsync or Dropbox stores and keeps your files backed up, but is not good for collaboration and real-time updating – for example, you cannot edit a file without acutally downloading the file. 

Using cloudHQ integration of Google Docs with  SugarSync or Dropbox, you and your team can have the best of both worlds: Manage your documents using a Google Docs interface and continuously synch and backup your files to you home comupter via SugarSync or Dropbox – all this in the simple, easy to use cloudHQ service.

Sign up for the cloudHQ private beta and get early access to the service. Visit www.cloudhq.net today to learn more.