Conceptually, there is a large difference between protecting data, and providing disaster recovery. However, the way these capabilities are delivered is often very similar. Conventional data backup and recovery applications typically also offer a disaster recovery option, sometimes referred to as "bare-metal restore." However, disaster recovery involves much more than simply restoring an application server. Ensuring that the data is protected from natural and human disasters is an important part, which requires off-site storage of data.

For home users and SMBs, DR is less of a focus than is data protection. If a hard drive crashes, or a laptop is lost or stolen, the primary concern is being able to get your data back.

Also, many companies also choose to ignore the problem of distributed data by ignoring it, or by instructing users to "Back up their data to a network drive regularly." Those of us who have lost data probably do this, sometimes.

Both of these problems can be addressed with the current crop of cloud storage backup offerings available. By providing automated backup, data is actually backed up. By doing so to a remote site, a moderate degree of disaster recovery is also provided. The data is protected from local disasters, including fire, theft, floods, tornados and human errors by maintaining copies of files safely and securely off-site.