In the past, Digital Vault to be only available to BT broadband customers, but now the carrier has opened the service to users of other ISPs. The Digital Vault service allows users to backup their own data such as movies, music, emails, and address books, as well as photos, documents and presentations, to a single secure point, known as a virtual deposit box. The content is encrypted when transmitted, and is stored in a data center. BT quoted recent research by Forrester, which said that 63%of PC owners in the UK view and store photos on their PC.
One of the advantages of the BT system is that it allows users to access the content from any computer connected to the internet. A further feature is that users can share their content with friends and family, for example by creating a photo album slide show in their personal vault and then emailing people with an invitation to view the slide show.
BT Digital Vault Basic is free and is aimed at users who want to manually upload, share and remotely access a small number of files. However, this is limited to 1GB to 2GB storage capacity, depending on whether you are a BT broadband customer or not.
There is an automatic back up version for those requiring more storage, called BT Digital Vault, which costs 4.99 pounds ($9.33) a month and backs up to 20GB of data automatically from a user nominated folder.
With broadband increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives more – more of us are moving important parts of our lives online, said Gavin Patterson, MD of consumer at BT Retail. If you want to share your holiday snaps with a friend, retrieve important files, or backup files on your laptop when you’re away from home, it’s all possible with BT Digital Vault.
