Let’s call Sunday backup day. Its not a new concept, I stole it from Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy (great show if you like technology, not overly geeky unlike the other shows I listen to). So, how do you backup? Backing up really menas that you have more than 1 copy of a file. 2 is good, 3 is better. What I recommend is a 2nd copy on some external hard drive. They are relatively cheap, I usually buy the LaCie Rugged USB drives – mainly because I need to carry them around a lot. If you don’t need to carry them around, you could go for more capacity at a cheaper price. PC users check out Microsoft’s Sync Toy 2.0 (free!), Mac users check out SuperDuper (free trial link is at the bottom of the page, less than $30 purchase one time).
For a 3rd copy, you could get an additional drive, but the real benefit of a 3rd copy is to store it at a different location in case some disaster occurs that ruins the 2 copies you already have (burglary, fire, earthquake…). So you could store this drive offsite at a family member’s place or a safety deposit box. You could mail DVDs to someone across the country (or world). Or, you could backup to the cloud. There are a few services I’ve checked out and they are all well-priced for home use. I recommend MozyHome – give them a try for free with 2GB of backup space (perfect for students wanting to backup their school work). Courtesy of the Geek Miser (that’s me). Other services you may want to check out include Carbonite, JungleDisk, and LogMeIn Backup.
