Patent ID: 8090690

Claim:
A method comprising: associating a transport mass storage system with a user account of a network based backup service and with a user equipment mass storage system using a unique identifier of the transport mass storage system, the network based backup service providing a network backup service system operable to store backup copies of files from the user equipment mass storage system; providing, by the network based backup service, the transport mass storage system for use with respect to the user equipment mass storage system; verifying the user equipment mass storage system is associated with the transport mass storage system using the unique identifier of the transport mass storage system; if the user equipment mass storage system and transport mass storage system association is verified, copying selected files from the user equipment mass storage system to the transport mass storage system; transporting the transport mass storage system to a location associated with the network based backup system; verifying the selected files copied to the transport mass storage system are associated with the user account of the network based backup service using the unique identifier of the transport mass storage system; and if the selected files and user account association is verified, copying the files from the transport mass storage system to a mass storage system of the network based backup system in association with the user account.