I recently received an email which was a repeat of several others I’ve received.  The writer had a question about backing up his important documents online.  That way if his computer was stolen, lost in a fire or flood, etc. he wouldn’t lose all of his critical files.  He now uses an external drive for backups but he would feel better using an “off site” backup.

There are several ways to do this, some easy and some requiring a little more from the user.  Also, some cost and some are free.

Those of you that know me or have read the columns for a while know I am all about free.  Even though I use freebies there is an excellent paid program I like called, Carbonite.  Carbonite, like most of the others, installs a small program on your computer and then will backup all of the documents in your “My Documents” folder (“Documents” on some systems) any time you are online and your computer is idle.  There is no size limit to the total number of files you can backup.  That would easily take care of all of your mp3 files for you music lovers.  At $54.95 per year that really isn’t a bad deal.  You may also get to those files from any other computer that has internet access.  So you could download a song to your sister’s computer in California when visiting. It is a neat application all around and well worth the peace of mind and easy access it provides.

Now to my freebies of which there are several; however, both of the ones that I will recommend are owned by Microsoft.

The one that I like best is called, Live Mesh.  Mesh not only backs them up but you can add those backed up folder/files to any other computer you own.  This makes it so that if I start writing a column in my local snack shop that has free Wi-Fi, when I save that portion of the column it is auto-saved online.  When I get home to my desktop the file will be there.  I can then finish it up there and it will be in the same folder it was in on my netbook. A very good deal!  The major limiting factor here is that Mesh will only hold 5GB of files for you.  For a comparison of file sizes my columns run an average of 32kb.  That means that I can store over 30,000 of my columns on Live Mesh.

If you need storage for more than 5GB of files, you should look to the free Skydrive program (skydrive.live.com).  Skydrive allows you to store up to 25GB of files.  It is similar to Carbonite although not as convenient since you physically have to back up any new or edited document.  It does not do this automatically which, I feel, is a significant factor.

My suggestion is that if you have a large number of files use Carbonite.  If not, Mesh is the way to go.  You can also try Carbonite for free for a short period of time if you would like to test it out.  Try them and let me know how you like them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 8:10 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.