This Thursday, March 31st is World Backup Day, a day to make sure your data is being backed up correctly, your backups are in good shape and that you can restore from backup if and when it’s needed.

It’s not a question of if your hard drive will fail, it’s a question of *when* it will fail. Hard drive life is rated in MTBF or mean time between failures which basically means that your hard drive will only run for so long before mechanical breakdown or physical damage will render your computer and your data unusable. Professional data recovery companies can charge several thousands of dollars to recover data from a failed drive and even if you make sure to use new drives and replace them frequently a fire, flood or theft can wipe all your data out in a heartbeat.  What can you do about this?

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Are you backed up?

This is a question that we ask and far too often the answer is “no”. There’s really no reason not to be backing up all your important information using automated software. Whether you rely on DVDs, USB thumb drives, external hard drives or online storage there are a multitude of choices to keep all your files safe.  Today we’re looking at a couple different choices for online storage.

Free, totally free!

http://mozy.com (PC and Mac 2GB storage free, $4.95/mo per computer for unlimited storage.)

Although 2GB isn’t very much space these days, you’ll be able to get all your important word docs, excel sheets and a handful of photos protected for free.  They have free software that automates the process of backing up so you don’t have to think about it once it’s set up.  After you max out the 2GB of free storage their $4.95/mo for unlimited space is a great deal.

http://www.getdropbox.com (PC and Mac 2GB storage free, 50GB for $9.99/mo) continue