You have got to backup your important files. Lots of people think that they backup their files, but they really don't. If you are depending on a system whereby once-in-a-while you stick a USB thumb drive into your computer, copy off the My Documents folder, and then toss the USB drive into a drawer, you are better off than 90% of the people out there, but you are still not safe.
Your data - pictures of your kids, the book that you are writing, business records, email history, address book, etc are irreplaceable. If you are depending upon a backup system that requires you to remember to do something, you are at risk. If your backup is in the same house/building as the computer where the original data resides, you are at risk. If you are not backing up at all, you are really at risk!
Hard disks crash. All the time. Disasters happen, hopefully not that frequently, but Murphy's Law dictates that when they do happen, it will be at the absolute worst possible time.
Okay, enough pontificating on the subject - we all agree - you need a reliable backup plan. And that the definition of a reliable plan has two major points:
1. No user intervention is required for routine backups
2. Data is stored off-site
Point 3 would be: It is cheap or better yet - FREE.
Only recently has this kind of solution been available to home and small business users. I have been using/testing a solution from Mozy.com that seems to fulfill both of my requirements, and it's FREE (up to a point...)
Mozy installed like a breeze. Selecting the files and folders that I wanted to protect was simple and intuitive. For personal use it is free for up to 2 Gigabytes of data. That's quite a bit of data. Maybe not enough for all your pictures and music, but most of us don't have 2 gigs of data.Once you try it out for a while and like it, it's simple to upgrade to an unlimited plan, which costs only $4.95 per month. For business users, there are reasonably affordable monthly plans, too.
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